Categories: learning materials

AI for OSINT – part 2 – Monitoring the Dark Web

Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is about using openly available information to extract insights.

In this post, I’m going to give you a better look at how AI is enabling automated OSINT analysis of the Dark Web.

The Dark Web is an interesting beast. At one time, researchers have crawled and managed to find ~30,000 websites; however, in the next few months, over half of these websites have disappeared.

You might be curious as to what kind of crazy things can be found in the Dark Web. The majority is actually focused on a couple main things: illegal pornography, drugs and weapons. However, you can also find a lot of relevant cyber security information, such as sensitive information about zero-day exploits, stolen datasets with login information, and botnets for hire. Naturally, this knowledge may be used to prevent the same attacks. But what amounts of manpower could possibly be enough to scour the whole Dark Web on a regular basis keeping up with its changing nature, understand the different languages that are being used, and be on top of new developments? That’s where AI comes to the rescue.

 

 

There exist AI systems, right now, such as BlackWidow, that can crawl the Deep and Dark Web across different languages. Within a couple days of monitoring, such a system can collect years of relevant information in the areas of cyber security and fraud monitoring. It can infer relationships between authors and forums and detect trends for cybersecurity-related topics. The image below shows clearly how these trends can indicate what kind of attacks are incoming

Dr. Emmanuel Tsukerman

Award-Winning Cybersecurity Data Scientist Dr. Tsukerman graduated from Stanford University and UC Berkeley. In 2017, his machine-learning-based anti-ransomware product won Top 10 Ransomware Products by PC Magazine. In 2018, he designed a machine-learning-based malware detection system for Palo Alto Network’s WildFire service (over 30k customers). In 2019, Dr. Tsukerman authored the Machine Learning for Cybersecurity Cookbook and launched the Cybersecurity Data Science Course and Machine Learning for Red Team Hackers Course.

Recent Posts

International Jobs in Cybersecurity Data Science

In part I of this blog post series, I told you how you can set…

4 years ago

Finding a Job in Cybersecurity Data Science

In a previous blog post, I told you how you can set yourself apart from…

4 years ago

Becoming a Cybersecurity Data Scientist

A lot of students ask me what to do to become a Cybersecurity Data Scientist…

4 years ago

Going Deep Into DeepFakes – Part 4 – How Humanity Can Persevere Against DeepFakes

If you've been paying any attention at all to what's going on, you must have…

4 years ago

Going Deep Into DeepFakes – Part 3 – AI-generated Reviews, Weaponizing Twitter and Artificially-Generated Universes

If you've been paying any attention at all to what's going on, you must have…

4 years ago

AI for OSINT – part 4 – Identity and Demographic Recognition from Video and Audio Footage

In this post, I’m going to cover how AI can comb through video and audio…

4 years ago