In the last two years, one in three companies worldwide have offered compromised data for sale on the dark web. The sale of access data to the company's infrastructure poses a major threat.
In total, between January 2022 and November 2023, Kaspersky Digital Footprint Intelligence discovered around 40.000 messages in forums, blogs and Telegram shadow channels that revolved around trading internal company databases and documents.
Sales of access data on the Darknet increased by 16 percent
However, some messages also offered access to corporate infrastructure. Kaspersky experts identified more than 6.000 such messages during the almost two-year investigation period - and the offers are increasing. The average number of monthly messages of this type increased by 2023 percent from 16 to 246 between last year and 286. With regard to the threat of supply chain attacks forecast for 2024, data leaks from smaller companies could also have significant consequences for a large number of people and companies worldwide have.
Kaspersky experts also examined which companies the access was sold to. To do this, they randomly selected 700 companies that were associated with compromised company data in 2022. Offers for these appeared in 233 posts on the Darknet. These explicitly mentioned data leaks, stolen access to infrastructure or hacked accounts.
Databases are offered in various underground forums
“Not every message on the dark web contains new or unique information,” explains Anna Pavlovskaya, an expert at Kaspersky Digital Footprint Intelligence. “Some offers can double. For example, if cyber criminals want to sell data particularly quickly, they publish the offers in various underground forums in order to reach a larger audience of potential buyers. In addition, certain databases can be combined and offered again. Such combined offers, for example, combine information from various previously leaked databases, such as passwords for email addresses.”
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