Study Findings Show Dark Net Poses Great Risk to Large Enterprises

Bromium®, Inc. has announced the findings of ‘Behind the Dark Net Black Mirror,’ a study that showed the growing risk posed by the dark net to the enterprise.

• By Kaitlyn DeHaven
• Jun 13, 2019

Bromium^®, Inc. has announced the findings of ‘Behind the Dark Net Black Mirror,’ a study that showed the growing risk posed by the dark net to the enterprise.

The study was done by Dr. Mike McGuire, a senior lecturer in Criminology at the University of Surrey, and was underwritten by Bromium. The study found that four in 10 dark net vendors are selling targeted hacking services aimed at FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 business, and there is a 20% rise in the number of dark net listings with a direct potential to harm the enterprise since 2016. In addition, 70% of dark net vendors invited researchers to talk on encrypted messaging applications, like Telegram, to take conversations beyond the reach of law enforcement.

Gregory Webb, CEO of Bromium, said that any business relying solely on detection should be carefully watching to ensure custom malware isn’t flying beneath the radar and infiltrating their systems.

“The dark net has become a veritable candy store for anyone looking to steal IP and corporate data or disrupt business operations,” Webb said. “Organizations should adopt a defense in-depth security strategy that includes application insolation capabilities to identify and contain threats, as well as the ability to generate in-depth threat telemetry to stop cybercriminals from obtaining persistent footholds in corporate networks.”

Mounir Hahad, head of Juniper Threat Labs at Juniper Networks said this study shows how following the hype and forgetting about the fundamentals can ultimately be destructive.

“For example, ‘Living Off the Land’ (LOL) as an attack tactic has been all the rage in the past 12 months, and some reports like the Verizon Data Breach Investigative report suggest that only a quarter of the reported breaches employ malware,” Hahad said. “This leads people to believe that behavioral analysis is more important than anti-malware defense, when in fact the malware scene is thriving and building custom tools to target specific industries and victims.”

Adam Laub, SVP Product Management, STEALTHbits Technologies, said that although the statistics are disturbing, it is not a surprise that dark net vendors are targeting large enterprises.

“While big companies may in theory have access to better or more resources than their smaller counterparts, it’s much easier to hide amidst the crowd in environments with so many moving pieces, and thus, a much greater propensity for open doors to exploit,” Laub said. “What you’ll find in a large enterprise is more predictable. Sure, they’re moving to the cloud like everyone else, but the good stuff is still largely on-premises, running off of dated and well-known technologies that attackers are comfortable working around.”