Data after the breach: Economics of the dark web

A breach is just the beginning. Once extracted, data moves through a sophisticated supply chain. Peek inside the dark web economy that turns stolen credentials into billions of dollars in profit.

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• Sean Michael Kerner

When sensitive data is stolen in high-profile data breaches, the information doesn't simply vanish into a digital void. Data extraction is just the beginning of a calculated journey through a sophisticated criminal economy where files are tested, packaged, priced and listed on dark web marketplaces. There, buyers ranging from fraud rings to nation-state actors bid for access, after which the information is used to commit a host of cybercrimes.

The dark web is an encrypted layer of the internet intentionally hidden from casual browsers. Accessing the dark web requires anonymizing software, often using Tor, which routes traffic through encrypted multihop relays and resolves .onion addresses invisible to standard DNS ...