Searchlight Cyber unveils AI Agent to automate dark web threat actor summaries

Searchlight Cyber has released a new AI capability that summarizes the activity of a threat actor in its dark web investigation platform, Cerberus. The Searchlight AI Agent uses the Cerberus’ dark web data lake to provide a quick overview of a threat actor, including their activity, conversation history, aliases, and associations, helping law enforcement and cybersecurity professionals to quickly identify profiles of interest and areas of investigation to pursue.

Criminals use the dark web to mask their identity and many go to great lengths to remain anonymous and obfuscate their crimes, including using several aliases, burner accounts, and operating across multiple sites. Historically, this has made it a difficult and manual process for investigators to attribute activity and profile criminals on the dark web.

The new Searchlight AI Agent expedites the process for law enforcement and cybersecurity professionals with an automated summary of threat actors, based on their activity on the dark web. The AI Agent generates a reliable and easily digested overview, drawn from Searchlight’s collection of more than 15 years of dark web data, which can help investigators to identify whether a threat actor is relevant to their area of focus, whether they have undertaken activity of particular interest, or to identify new leads that could be followed.

Details included in the summary include:

• Dark web post analysis – An overview of the content of the actor’s posts and interactions with other dark web users, including activity dates and posting pattern analysis.
• Digital identifiers – Such as email addresses, PGP keys, and handles, numbers, or IDs for messaging platforms like Telegram, WhatsApp, Jabber, and TOX.
• Open source intelligence – Relevant insights sourced from reliable reports and research, especially those with identifying information on particular actors.
• Vendor insights – Additional intelligence on sellers on dark web marketplaces, including goods sold, shipping and payment information, customer feedback, and their reputation.

“We hold a huge amount of highly valuable contextual data on threat actors operating on the dark web and the new Searchlight AI Agent allows us to serve this up to customers in the most efficient way possible. This could expedite hours of investigation time that has historically been spent scouring forums, marketplaces, and encrypted chats, trying to piece together information on an actor. In seconds, analysts can now quickly determine if an actor is relevant to their area of investigation and identify new paths of inquiry,” said David Osler, Head of Product at Searchlight Cyber.

The Searchlight AI Agent is the latest in a series of AI enhancements to the Cerberus product over the last two years, including AI-powered Language Translation, Thread Summarization, and Sentiment Analysis. Searchlight works in close collaboration with its customers to identify areas where AI can support investigations and the ultimate objective of combating online crime.