New tech from DSU professor can trace the dark web

Yahoo

3 days ago

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) —Dakota State University is known for being a leader in the cyber field, and one professor has received a patent for her cutting-edge technology that many people once thought was impossible.
Many of us have heard of the dark web, but we may not be entirely familiar with its nature.
However, DSU professor Arica Kulm is very familiar with it. She says the difference between the dark web and your regular web browser starts with the URL.
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'For dark web sites, it's a 54-character alphanumeric string. So it's hard to get to, hard to remember. And it's held behind a series of relays and encryption,' DSU Director of Digital Forensic Services, Arica Kulm said, '…it's that anonymity and the encryption often lends itself to criminal activity. So you'll find drug sites where you can buy illegal drugs. You'll find illegal content in the form of child pornography,' she said.
One thing Kulm has always heard was that you can't trace things on the dark web.
'How can that be that you can access something that can be sinister and then not leave a trace behind? I didn't understand how that could possibly be,' Kulm said.
So, she created a technology that can trace it.
'It runs off of a flash drive or a thumb drive. You plug it into a computer and it will tell you if that computer, whether it's a laptop or a desktop, has been accessing the dark web,' Kulm said.
Cynthia Hetherington has collaborated with Kulm for a few years.
'Arica's work with the dark Web, from my perspective, is going to be unique because she is very much in the cyber realm. And by that I mean like the zeros, the ones, the technology underneath it. That's really where her area of expertise is, is to understand where data becomes a thing. I pick it up at the point where it becomes information and understanding the impact of what that data is,' CEO and founder of Hetherington Group, Cynthia Hetherington, said.
Hetherington says that Kulm's work is going to change how investigators and law enforcement work with the dark web.
'The point of the dark web, the point of it being dark, is that we can't see it. So it needs someone like me, 30 years of experience digging, you know, hard and long, to find all that information. But Arica has found a way to make that simpler so that it's more attainable and obtainable by the average investigator,' Hetherington said.
But Kulm hopes it reaches beyond just law enforcement usage.
'I could see it used in a corporate environment as well to see if their machines have been infected, if they've been calling out. Because oftentimes if you get in, your machines can be infected long before the ransomware note pops up on the machine,' Kulm said.
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To learn more about the Dark Web Artifact Framework or to use it, you can contact the Research and Development office at DSU.
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