The important and rapidly emerging new field known as 'cyber threat intelligence' explores the paradigm that defenders of computer networks gain a better understanding of their adversaries by understanding what assets they have available for an attack. In this book, a team of experts examines a new type of cyber threat intelligence from the heart of the malicious hacking underworld - the dark web. These highly secure sites have allowed anonymous communities of malicious hackers to exchange ideas and techniques, and to buy/sell malware and exploits. Aimed at both cybersecurity practitioners and researchers, this book represents a first step toward a better understanding of malicious hacking communities on the dark web and what to do about them. The authors examine real-world darkweb data through a combination of human and automated techniques to gain insight into these communities, describing both methodology and results.

Malicious hackers utilize the World Wide Web to share knowledge. Analyzing the online communication of these threat actors can help reduce the risk of attacks. This book shifts attention from the defender environment to the attacker environment, offering a new security paradigm of 'proactive cyber threat intelligence' that allows defenders of computer networks to gain a better understanding of their adversaries by analyzing assets, capabilities, and interest of malicious hackers. The authors propose models, techniques, and frameworks based on threat intelligence mined from the heart of the underground cyber world: the malicious hacker communities. They provide insights into the hackers themselves and the groups they form dynamically in the act of exchanging ideas and techniques, buying or selling malware, and exploits. The book covers both methodology - a hybridization of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and social network analysis methods - and the resulting conclusions, detailing how a deep understanding of malicious hacker communities can be the key to designing better attack prediction systems.