DarkCyber Video News for July 2, 2019, Now Available

The DarkCyber video news program for July 2, 2019, is now available at www.arnoldit.com/wordpress and on Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/345294527. The program is a production of Stephen E Arnold. It is the only weekly video news shows focusing on the Dark Web, cybercrime, and lesser known Internet services.

This week’s story line up includes: Tor survives another court battle related to a child who overdosed on Dark Web drugs; a newspaper unwittingly provides a road map for undertaking credit card fraud; a profile of DataWalk, a next-generation intelligence platform with a secret sauce; and Recorded Future’s threat intelligence service runs from Amazon’s platform.

This week’s lead story is the revelation that Recorded Future relies on Amazon AWS to serve its new threat intelligence service. Recorded Future was founded in 2009 with initial investors Google and In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the US Central Intelligence Agency. In May 2019, the predictive analytics company was acquired by Insight Partners, a leading global capital and private equity firm. The purchase price was about $700 million. Recorded Future’s threat intelligence service is in the same product category as FireEye’s information service. Providing threat information in a browser provides easier access to this information. Stephen E Arnold, author of CyberOSINT: Next Generation Information Access, said: “The use of the Amazon AWS platform, not the competing Google service, is significant. Recorded Future joins BAE, Palantir Technology, and a handful of other firms leveraging the AWS infrastructure. Amazon is emerging as the plumbing for law enforcement and intelligence software.”

Other stories for the July 2, 2019, program are:

First, a Utah court decided that Tor, the software bundle required to access the Dark Web, was not liable for a death. The parents of a young person who overdosed on drugs ordered from a online contraband vendor via Tor sued the foundation involved with the anonymizing technology. Other cases have been filed against Tor. The deciding factor in this most recent decision and other cases is the US law which treats online platforms differently from traditional publishers. The court uncovered information that there are about 4,000 people in Utah who use Tor and presumably the Dark Web each day.

Second, a British newspaper published an informational article about online credit card fraud. DarkCyber interpreted the information in the report as a road map for a person who wanted to commit an online crime. The news story provided sufficient information about where to locate “how to” materials to guide an interested individual. Tips for locating sources of stolen credit card data were embedded “between the lines” in the report. The newspaper did omit one important fact. Organized crime syndicates are hiring individuals to commit credit card fraud and other financial crimes.

Finally, DarkCyber profiles a start up called DataWalk. This company provides a next-generation intelligence analysis and investigation platform. Competitors include IBM Analyst’s Notebook and Palantir Technologies Gotham / Titan products. DataWalk, however, has patented its technology which implements the firm’s method of delivering query results from disparate sources of structured an unstructured content. Plus the company can provide an analyst with content from third-party content products such as Thomson Reuters and the specialist publisher Whooster. The service also scales to accommodate data analysis, regardless of the volume of information available to the system. DataWalk’s analytic system operates in near-real time. DataWalk allows a user to perform sophisticated investigative and analytic procedures via a mouse-centric graphical interface. A user can click on an icon and the system automatically generates a “workflow ribbon.” The ribbon can be saved and reused or provided to another member of the investigative team. More information about this firm is available at www.datawalk.com .

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 major law enforcement and intelligence conferences and training programs. 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 the impact of the Dark Web on the “regular” Internet and its users. Other topics include innovations in smart software for law enforcement and intelligence applications. He will be appearing at the TechnoSecurity & Digital Forensics Conference in San Antonio, Texas, and at other venues in the United States. He publishes the free Web log “Dark Cyber Annex” (formerly Beyond Search) available at www.arnoldit.com/wordpress.

Contact Information

Stuart Schram IV

Chief Technical Officer

Arnold Information Technology

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