New Cyber Platform Lab 1 Decodes Dark Web Data to Uncover Hidden Supply Chain Breaches

Mar 20, 2023The Hacker NewsData Breach / Dark Web

This article has not been generated by ChatGPT.

2022 was the year when inflation hit world economies, except in
one corner of the global marketplace – stolen data. Ransomware
payments fell by over 40% in 2022 compared to 2021. More
organisations chose not to pay ransom demands, according to
findings by blockchain firm Chainalysis.

Nonetheless, stolen data has value beyond a price tag, and in
risky ways you may not expect. Evaluating stolen records is what
Lab 1, a new cyber monitoring
platform^[1], believes will make a
big difference for long-term cybersecurity resilience.

Think of data value this way:

• Stolen credentials can become future phishing attacks
• Logins for adult websites are potential extortion attempts
• Travel and location data are a risk to VIPs and senior
  leadership,
• And so on…

Hackers could retaliate for non-payment by simply posting their
loot to forums where the data will be available for further
enrichment and exploitation.

Shining a light on dark places

Even though your company may not have suffered a direct breach,
your data may already be on the Dark Web. That is why Lab 1 gets hold of
available data^[2]
and contextualises it to assess risk.

The Dark Web started off as a closed network to protect
dissidents. Now half of it is a popular backwater for criminal
activity. According to the IMF, data marketplaces are the second
most popular activity after pharma and recreational drugs.

Industry research in 2022 also found more than 24 billion
username and password combinations on sale on the dark web, up from
15 billion in 2020. But there can be other records – intellectual
property, accountancy documents, employee records and more.

Breaches end up being marketed by hackers with data descriptions
and auction demands, often in Bitcoin. By getting hold of these
records, no matter their value or half life, Lab 1 builds a picture
of risk exposure.

Chain reaction

You may not think of your supply chain as a source of
cybersecurity risk, but you should. 53% of organisations have had a
data breach caused by third party information theft, according to
Ponemon Institute.

Data breaches can and do spread outside the perimeter of your
business. That’s the insight that drives the Lab 1 platform. In an
interconnected business, the tools you use, the agencies you hire,
and the subcontractors you use to perform everyday business are all
potential vectors of attack.

Say you’re a client of a software vendor, and their
stolen data pack includes code access to the servers of various
clients, it’s likely to include yours. Or what if trip details of
VIP customers get leaked and they’re about to show up at an
important conference?

Monitor your supply chain

Fallouts from cybersecurity breaches don’t have to be
inevitable. Lab 1 monitors, alerts and
analyses^[3] data breaches across a
company’s entire supply chain by finding and contextualising data
found on forums, messaging platforms and Dark Web marketplaces.

Using Lab 1, organisations can “follow” the companies they work
with and get alerted if any of them have been breached that would
pose a risk. This can be particularly useful for breach insurance
and other risk-related provisions.

Because Lab 1 is finding new data entities by the second – 24bn
to date – and is adding them to CiGraph, its graph database, the
monitoring is continuous.

As and when incidents are recorded or data becomes available,
Lab 1 systems provide a near-real-time alerting service called
Blast Radius. It allows security teams to dig deeper on
what happened.

Control the network effect of breaches

Every incident generates fallout that impacts other companies,
sometimes in their thousands. Lab 1’s Fallout service
details this network effect and how companies you follow (including
your own) are impacted.

Lab 1 also details history, risk quantification, and recommended
remedies, based on the nature and size of the breach. Helping to
prevent attack, manage damage and view live risk quantification
across thousands of suppliers, with the intention for businesses to
build more robust supply chains.

To find out if there’s a hidden data breach that involves
your company, go to https://www.lab-1.io/^[4], where CiGraph may yet
reveal a Dark Web secret you didn’t know you had.