Dashpay Magazine: Sixgill Scours The Dark Web To Create User Patterns And Prevent Cyber Attacks
Cryptocurrency has often been associated with illegal transactions on the darknet. But the deep web can be used in a positive manner as well. Sixgill, a new darknet intelligence platform, has been created to prevent sensitive data leaks, including credit card information and medical records. Moreover, this startup claims they can prevent cyber attacks before they even occur.
SixGill Uses The Darknet For The Greater Good
Albeit users of the deep web do everything they can to protect their identity and remain anonymous, no solution is fail-proof at this stage. Sixgill, a new Israeli Startup, showcases this statement by using the darknet as a way to prevent cyber attacks. Moreover, the company feels they posses the tools to prevent sensitive data leaks in the future. In most cases, stolen data is sold on the deep web in exchange for Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.
The reputation of the dark net revolves around illegal trades, internet criminals, and cyber attacks. To be more precise government officials view the dark web as a collection of marketplaces facilitating collaboration between criminals. Some would even argue the deep web is where terrorist attack plans are forged, albeit there is no evidence to back up these claims.
That being said, Sixgill wants to harness the distributed nature of the deep web and use it to do some good. By using proprietary algorithms and newer in-house developed technologies, the startup will use the darknet as a source of valuable information. Collecting and analyzing data obtained from the darknet will help the company’s tools evolve over time, and ultimately prevent cyber attacks from taking place.
So far, the company has been deploying automated monitoring systems, which keep tabs on open, closed, and hybrid darknet forums. Through the collection of big data, the algorithms can prioritize information and determine specific patterns which could lead to impending threats. Moreover, Sixgill also creates profiles of dark web users, albeit it is not clear how the toolkit achieves this step.
Automated solutions such as these can prove to be very powerful, albeit they may still report false positives. While Sixgill prides itself on providing real-time alerts to thwart cybercrime in the bud,it remains to be seen how reliable the information will be. That said, the company employs various top intelligence officials who have plenty of experience in the field.
Many of its customers feel Sixgill is “the most innovative among cyber intelligence packages”. Speaking of clients, Sixgill’s customers range from telecom companies to financial corporations and even various governments. That said, there are still early days for the solution, as it only launched in June 2016.
A feature written by JP Buntinx , Source: http://dashpaymagazine.com/index.php/2016/07/30/sixgill-scours-dark-web-create-user-patterns-prevent-cyber-attacks/
The scary thing is to consider future uses of this technology, maybe they partner with Facebook or AT&T - and cross analyze the times they see the darknet forum posters online with the times Facebook or AT&T users, then compare language syntax and Grammer with those narrowed down FB users.
Maybe then they cross check that with other social media to build comprehensive profiles.
Of coarse this doesn't stop with the darkweb, there are various Governmental and Corporate actors doing this right now to activists and anti government persons. Israel is well known for Psy-op and Disinformation campaigns as well as targeting activists.
Most recently "Hacking Team" - a tech company that sells "offensive intrusion and surveillance capabilities" (spyware) was caught selling its surveillance technology to countries with horrible human rights records...
A DETAILED LOOK AT HACKING TEAM’S EMAILS ABOUT ITS REPRESSIVE CLIENTS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Team
Here's a really good clip of billionaire Mark Cuban - which you can guarantee has met with some of the big companies doing this - warning of these future technologies and the need to go back and clean up your social media often.
Is anybody really surprised by that?
If that's true then: Sixgill = "the new evil"!
But I highly doubt any of those things Sixgill claims it is capable are true! To accomplish even remotely such things, one would need huuuge resources, resources just governements like the USA, UK ect could provide (Billions of Dollars) but not an isreali "start up". And even with those resources you just can't (at least not at this moment) de-anonymize i.e. Tor users (unless you single out one specific target/person or theymessed up their Opsec). And that's just one "Darknet", there still plenty of other "darknets" or anonymization technics beside the Tor network. With more to come.
And that is just the anonymization part, there is still the encryption part. For example the proper use of pgp/gpg is un-crackable at the moment, Tor traffic is encrypted multiple times too, and things like Vera-Crypt for hdd and os encryption are (if used properly) un-crackable at the moment too.
My personal conclusion:
Sisgill makes bold claims that are probably just false.
Two other things I'd like to point out:
The deep web isn't equal the dark net!
The Deep Web:
90% of the internet consist of the deep web. Deep web just means that the deep web is just not accessible by the broad public and/or public search engines.
The dark nets:
Dark nets are part of the internet that provide anonymous web/data-hosting and anonymous surfing/using for it's users. Examples: Tor Network, i2p, freenet..
Terroist do NOT use the dark net and "heavy encryption" (i.e. pgp/gpg) yet!
So far only (but plenty) evidence exist that terrorists do NOT use the "dark net". Even when the media and authorities claimed, after a terror attack, that the terrorists used heavy encryption and the darknet to plan and execute the attack, it later turned out to be wrong/a lie. Unless it was already a build in encryption (iPhone, Telegram App,..since of lately Whatsapp).
This might change pretty soon, since terrorists also watch the news and if the media and authorities keep telling them that "they" use the darknet and "heavy encryption" they WILL of course look into that at some point. But at least till now they use facebook, twitter, "clearnet websites", whatsapp, telegram and youtube.
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good post @dashpaymag
Keep up the great work @dashpaymag
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I'm not entirely sure how they can track activity on the darkweb back to the original source by discovering a communication port that is going through an anonymous network.
Even if Sixgill's algorithms could intercept a message between 2 people, that message is most likely being sent over a pgp and is absolutely not going to be read by anyone but the intended receiver who holds the key to view it.
Sixgill Claims their monitoring is absolutely anonymous and cannot be tracked or blocked on the darkweb by its users, isn't that the whole point of accessing the Darkweb in the first place?
It sounds to me like Sixgill will be roaming an anonymous network intercepting encrypted data and collecting useless addresses that can't be traced back to a valuable source. I will continue to read up on this.
Thank you for the write, and the countless hours I'm going to spend now researching Sixgill.
haha
Appreciate your time.
@dahspaymag, can activity really be tracked on the dark web back to the original source?I
thoughts that communication on the dark web is encrypted end to end, and that it can only be decrypted by the intended receiver.
If Sixgill really could pull this off, this will be a game changer.
Hi! This post has a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 11.4 and reading ease of 47%. This puts the writing level on par with Michael Crichton and Mitt Romney.
Keep up the great work @dashpaymag
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