Criminals trading in personal data on Dark Web, Zero Trust World conference hears

The Dark Web is an area of the internet that cannot be accessed using ordinary tools. Photo: Dominic Lipinski/PA

Adrian Weckler

Live payroll and tax return data are being posted on the Dark Web for criminals to access, a cyber-security conference has heard.

ThreatLocker’s Zero Trust World event hosted a demonstration from an ethical hacker which described portions of employee financial data being accessed in real time on the Dark Web. The demonstration was set up to warn IT professionals how easy it is for hackers and criminals to access leaked and stolen data.

The hacker side-event also revealed the presence of Dark Web operatives who claimed they could destroy individuals’ reputations for a fee, by planting illegal images and other data.

The demonstration was held a week after authorities claimed to have disrupted one of the most notorious ransomware gangs in the world, LockBit.

The Dark Web is an area of the internet that cannot be accessed using ordinary tools, such as Google. It often contains illegal content such as child abuse imagery and is also used to illegally trade goods such as drugs and weapons.

ThreatLocker, which is a specialist in IT security software and ‘zero trust’ IT processes, recently opened a base of operations in Blanchardstown, promising to scale to 120 jobs.

CEO Danny Jenkins told the event that the purpose of the Zero Trust World was not “not to make this another conference where you walk around some booths, but to make them actually educational”.

He said he set up ThreatLocker in 2017 in response to a local insurance company being ravaged by ransomware, partially due to sub-standard decryption software.

“The owner of the company, a 60-something-year-old man, called me up, crying,” Mr Jenkins said.

“He didn’t have any backups and his databases were gone. And it was a disaster.”

Soon after, Threatlocker was set up between Mr Jenkins, his wife Sami and John Carolan.

The company announced an update to its recently-launched ThreatLocker Ops service, designed to identify and detect IT security anomalies using telemetry and other methods. The service alerts users to vulnerable versions of popular office software, such as Microsoft Exchange.

Mr Jenkins said that cybersecurity tools tend to be “for big large organisations” and that the industry needed to provide more solutions for smaller firms.