DarkCyber for August 21, 2018, Now Available

DarkCyber for August 21, 2018, is now available at www.arnoldit.com/wordpress and on Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/285690531.

Stephen E Arnold’s DarkCyber is a weekly video news and analysis program about the Dark Web and lesser known Internet services.
This week’s program covers four Dark Web and security related stories.

The first story runs down more than nine ways to commit cybercrime in order to steal digital currency. A student assembled these data and published them on a personal page on the Medium information service. Prior to the step by step explanation, ways to exploit blockchain for the purpose of committing a possible crime was difficult to find. The Dark Cyber video includes a link to the online version of this information. Stephen E Arnold, author of Dark Web Notebook, “The easier and easier access to specific methods for committing cybercrime make it easy to attack individuals and organizations. On one hand, greater transparency may help some people take steps to protect their data. On the other hand, the actionable information may encourage individuals to try their hand at crime in order to obtain easy money. How to information increases the likelihood of attacks.

The second story reviews the mobile phone hacking method called SIM swapping. This exploit makes it possible for a bad actor to take control of a mobile phone and then transfer digital currency from the phone owner’s account to the bad actor’s account. More “how to” explanations are finding their way into the Surface Web, a trend which has been gaining momentum in the last six months. 

The third story reviews how a variant of the Eternal Blue exploit compromised the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. Three of the company’s production facilities were knocked offline. Eternal Blue is the software which enables a number of ransomware attacks. The code was allegedly developed by a government agency. The DarkCyber video provides links to repositories of some software developed by the US government. Stephen E Arnold, author of Dark Web Notebook, “The easier and easier access to specific methods for committing cybercrime make it easy to attack individuals and organizations. On one hand, greater transparency may help some people take steps to protect their data. On the other hand, the actionable information may encourage individuals to try their hand at crime in order to obtain easy money. Once how to information is available to hackers, the likelihood of more attacks, exploits, and crimes is likely to rise.”

The final story reports that WikiLeaks itself has had some of its messages leaked. These messages provide insight into the topics which capture WikiLeaks interest and reveal information about some of the source of support the organization enjoys. The Dark Cyber video provides a link to this collection of WikiLeaks messages.

About Stephen E Arnold

Stephen E Arnold is the author of “Dark Web Notebook” and “CyberOSINT: Next Generation Information Access.” This book describes some of the technologies used by GSR and Cambridge Analytica to acquire and analyze Facebook user data. He has been named as a technology adviser to the UK based Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Human Trafficking and Child Sex Abuse.” Mr. Arnold also lectures to law enforcement and intelligence professionals who will be attending the September 2018 Telestrategies ISS conference in Washington, DC, in September 2018. In recent months, he has shared his research with law enforcement and intelligence professionals in the US and Europe. His most recent lectures focus on deanonymizing chat and digital currency transactions. One hour and full day programs are available via webinars and on-site presentations. He publishes the free Web log “Beyond Search,” which is available at www.arnoldit.com/wordpress.

Contact Information

Stuart Schram IV

Chief Technical Officer, ArnoldIT

Arnold Information Technology

Contact via E-mail