The dark web is often seen as a mysterious and malevolent creature, built out of the myths and legends created by popular media and clickbait headlines. In reality, the dark web is home to a vibrant and thriving criminal ecosystem, with a resilient fraud trade at the center of the action. Inaccurately portrayed as a playground for hitmen and human traffickers, the dark web is, instead, a place where fraudsters leverage tools, tactics, and technology to build scalable business models, collect and co-opt sensitive data, and exploit organizations around the clock. What is the dark web fraud economy? What drives it? What can we do about it?

This session will go beyond high-level introductions to the idea of the dark web and provide you with a tactical view of what the dark web is, how it works, and how fraudsters function, trade, and scheme together in the criminal underground. This session connects the dots, demonstrating how compromised data and community tradecraft create the fraud lifecycle we see today. You will come away understanding how the fraudsters do what they do, how the dark web helps, and how things are changing — for better and for worse.

You Will Learn How To:

• Recognize dark web technology and terminology
• Determine key drivers of the dark web fraud economy
• Identify at-risk data types and areas of most frequent exposure
• Assess gaps between criminal data valuation and corporate data valuation
• Relate dark web fraud activity to the fallout from current fraud schemes