10 Dark Web Facts You Need to See Right Now
Let Dark Web Facts (Not Hype) Inform Your Security Decisions
Dark web threats are growing increasingly more dangerous as a booming dark web economy drives cybercrime to new heights, setting records for phishing, hacking and (of course) ransomware. This cybercrime wave is creating additional pressure on already overstressed cybersecurity teams. But there’s a lot of hype out there about the dark web that’s designed to scare instead of inform. Let’s cut through the noise with some real dark web facts.
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Don’t make decisions about your organization’s security posture until you see these essential 2021 Dark Web facts.
- Dark Web activity has increased by 300% in the last 3 years.
- Over 30% of North Americans access the dark web regularly.
- In 2020, credentials for about 133,927 C-level Fortune 1000 executives were available on the dark web
- More than 22 billion new records were added to the dark web in 2020
- Satellite affiliates of cybercrime gangs pay the boss gang 10 – 20% of the take on each successful job
- An astonishing 25,927,476 passwords that belong to employees at Fortune 1000 companies were available readily in dark web markets and data dumps.
- About 65% of active criminal gangs rely on spear phishing powered by dark web data to launch attacks.
- The largest credential file to ever hit the dark web at once is the RockYou2021 password leak.
- Hackers attack every 39 seconds, on average 2,244 times a day.
- 60% of the information available on the Dark Web could potentially harm enterprises.
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What’s For Sale on the Dark Web?
In addition to information, Dark Web markets also deal in other nefarious things like criminal services, espionage, illegal collectibles or animals, human trafficking, credit card numbers, drugs, guns, counterfeit money, stolen goods, cybercrime software, cracked credentials and other illicit items. Cybercriminals also enjoy gambling and all sorts of strange things are in the pot at dark web online poker games.
In a recent breakdown of activity in popular dark web forums, researchers noted:
- An estimated 90% of posts on dark web forums are from buyers looking to contract someone for cybercrime.
- Almost 70% of dark web forum hiring posts were looking for cybercriminals to do some website hacking.
- Over 20% were looking for bad actors who could obtain specifically targeted user or client databases.
- About 7% of forum posts were ads for hackers looking for work.
- 2% of forum posts were made by cybercriminal developers who were selling the tools
Learn more about:
- How do cybercrime-as-a-service freelancing, hiring and business transactions work on the dark web? Learn more>>
- How do gangs pull off ransomware operations and who gets paid? Find out now>>
- How much cybercrime risk is real and how much is hype? See the data>>
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Who is Using the Dark Web & Why?
Users primarily access the dark web using the TOR browser. More than 2 million active users connect to the dark web through the TOR browser every day.
| Country | Mean daily users |
|---|---|
| Russia | 9982 (21.80 %) |
| United States | 6324 (13.81 %) |
| Iran | 3324 (7.26 %) |
| Germany | 2096 (4.58 %) |
| Belarus | 1791 (3.91 %) |
| Brazil | 1711 (3.74 %) |
| India | 1487 (3.25 %) |
| China | 1391 (3.04 %) |
| United Kingdom | 1299 (2.84 %) |
| Turkey | 1019 (2.23 %) |
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