According to researchers the dark Web risk is a risk that is constantly growing. They say that it is threat for businesses, and the danger increases every year. Every year hackers release troves of information that other hackers actors use in facilitating different cyberattacks, this information lands on the Dark Web. The researchers estimate that hackers dropped over 22 million records on the Dark Web in the year 2020.
The Researchers claim that the Dark Web already contains millions of pieces of information that hackers could use to launch millions of cyberattacks, the researchers estimate that approximately 60% of the information that was on the Dark Web before the Covid-19 pandemic is dangerous and has the potential to harm many businesses. They estimate that percentage is climbing very fast, and say that it will continue to grow as the fallout from a record number of data breaches that happened in 2020. They also estimate that, Dark Web activity has grown by more than 300% in the last three years, thereby making both the buying and selling markets much bigger today.
The Data breaches, involved a lot of ransomware, these breaches climbed steadily throughout the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020. 40% of Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) were victims to diverse ransomware attacks, the estimate of firms that experienced cyber attacks in 2020 was as high as 85%. With numbers like this dark web hackers are having a field day and there is an abundance of data available to other malicious actors.
How Hackers threaten businesses.
There are many ways hackers can use the information they steal to harm businesses, these include:
- Craft spear phishing attacks against high level executives
- Using stolen passwords service providers for credential stuffing
- Using company email addresses to commit business email compromise (BEC) scams
- Using a government agency’s records to perform phishing attacks
- Use stolen data to enable credential theft from a company’s clients
Remember to be apply caution as you surf the dark web. And protect your businesses because hackers and government agencies are snooping around looking for their next victims.
Source: Securityboulevard