A New Partnership Seeks to Thwart Dark Web Cyber Thieves

Nasdaq Verafin, a developer of fraud-prevention technology, and Q6 Cyber, a supplier of fraud intelligence, have paired to offer a service to financial institutions that the parties say helps identify and respond faster to scam threats on the dark Web as they are developing.

The partnership, announced early Thursday, is meant to serve financial institutions as they confront losses caused by bad actors dealing in stolen checks and payment cards as well as pilfered online-banking credentials. The dark Web refers to so-called private forums and other outlets operating on encrypted channels. These forums typically cannot be found by search engines. Threats stemming from this activity can include losses from compromised checks and stolen online-banking credentials. Check fraud alone grew at a yearly rate of 20.4% over the past two years, according to a report prepared by Nasdaq Verafin.

The new alliance will flow data to clients of Nasdaq Verafin concerning potential fraud ahead of moves by fraudsters to act on the stolen information. The receipt of the data and counter-action by financial institutions, indeed, is meant to be undertaken in a single workflow, the parties say.

The dimensions of the threat can be seen in statistics collected by Q6 Cyber, which says its monitoring has detected over the past 18 months more than 1.2 million compromised checks, 57 million unique compromised credentials, and 158 million compromised payment cards.

“Access to these sources and communities is not something you can buy or crawl,” Eli Dominitz, chief executive at Miami-based Q6 Cyber, says in a statement. “Over the past 10 years, we have built a massive network of proprietary sources deep inside the dark Web, going after the threat actors that target financial institutions. With first-hand access, every piece of intelligence we deliver is a confirmed compromise or threat rather than an exposure score.” The link to Nasdaq Verafin, he says, alerts fraud teams to act “days or weeks” before any attempted fraud.

For its part, Nasdaq Verafin says it serves more than 2,800 financial institutions holding some $13 trillion collectively in assets. The company was formed in February 2021 when Nasdaq Inc., the operator of the Nasdaq stock exchange, acquired Newfoundland, Canada-based Verafin for $2.75 billion in cash.