Cyber Security Companies Exposed On The Dark Web

As organisations turn to remote working access solutions to empower workers during the COVID-19 crisis, trouble seems to be bubbling across numerous illegal marketplaces and the Dark Web. Cyber-criminals are actively shopping for credentials hoping to access valuable information without raising any alarms. 

Many cyber security businesses have exposed and vulnerable sensitive data online, including personal data and passwords, according to a new study from Application Security firm ImmuniWeb. 

The study found that 97% of the leading cybersecurity companies have had their data exposed on the Dark Web in 2020, with over 160,000 high or critical incidents that may jeopardise their clients.

ImmuniWeb selected 398 of the world’s top security vendors and then scoured surface, dark and deep web sites including hacking forums and marketplaces, WhatsApp groups, public code repositories, social networks and paste websites. They claim to have discovered verified sensitive data over 631,000 times, with 17% of these “incidents” estimated to have critical risk. This means they included logins with plaintext passwords, or data leaks such as PII (information that directly identifies an individual by name, address, or an identifying number)and financial records that are recent and/or unique.

In total, the research revealed PII and corporate data accounted for half (50%) of all incidents, with credentials taking 30% and backups and dumps 15%.

• Also concerning is the fact that 29% of the discovered passwords were “weak”, i.e. they featured less than eight characters, with no uppercase, no numbers and no special characters. 

• In 41% of companies studied, employees were found to have reused passwords on different breached systems, further exposing their organisation to breach risks.

• The report also revealed that over 5100 stolen credentials came from breaches of adult content sites, meaning employees had registered on such sites with their work emails.

• Some of the Report’s attacks and exposures dates back as far as 2012, and the majority of incidents were classed as low (25%) or medium (49%) risk. 

Low risk refers to “mentions of an organisation, its IT assets or employees in data leaks, samples or dumps without accompanying sensitive or confidential information,” while medium risk could include encrypted passwords or leaks of “moderately” sensitive data such as source code or internal docs.

In a different survey, the Ponemon Institute found that 59% of companies had a data breach due to compromised third parties including cybersecurity vendors. Recent research, published in July 2020 by Digital Shadows, estimates that there are over 15 billion stolen records from over 100,000 data breaches currently available for sale.

Today, cybercriminals endeavor to maximise their profits and minimise their risks of being apprehended by targeting trusted third parties instead of going after the ultimate victims.

The data and surveys show that for cyber-criminals, the primary targets are US companies, which comprise more than one-third of all attacks, followed by Italy and the UK (5.2% each), Brazil (4.4%) and Germany (3.1%). In most cases, access to these networks is sold to other Dark Web criminals. They either develop an attack on business systems themselves or hire a team of more skilled hackers to escalate network privileges and infect critical hosts in the victim’s infrastructure with malware. Ransomware operators were among the first to use this scheme. 

The sheer complexity of the dark web means it’s unlikely hacktivist groups will be regulated any time soon. In the meantime, it’s clear that criminal groups are arming themselves with freely-available technologies that are making their job even easier, and their victims’ job all that more difficult.

Immuniweb:       PA Consulting:    Security Boulevard:    Infosecurity Magazine: 

For cost effective advice and recommendations on your organisation’s cyber security and training needs please contact Cyber Security Intelligence 

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