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Ivan: 0:00

I think that it will be interesting to know that there are 1 billion websites now and this is only 4% of internet. That's why, when I even now, call the internet honestly, I mean all digital space and 96% of the data in internet are in darknet. So we have a dark web monitoring and dark web solution and social links, and that's how we started and that's how I found a lot of insights and that we launched in january. I called it dark side ei initiative. Why also dark side ai? It's also the story that two years ago, we started to work with company and we even invested in this company. The name of this, this company Brightside AI. So what guys are doing? They are trying to use AI to defense the employees of the companies from the AI solutions that criminals are using.

Craig: 0:56

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Ivan: 2:11

That's oraclecom slash ionai E-Y-E-O-N-A-I All run together Oraclecom slash ionai Hi, my name is Ivan, I am CEO and founder of Social Links Company and, at the same time, I am author and founder of DarkSide AI Initiative. And let's introduce Social Links, because that's how it all started and we launched this company in 2015. And we were one of the first commercial company in open source intelligence area. What we are doing? We are gathering public available information about people and companies and helping governments and businesses to secure governments and businesses to secure and to make our life and businesses safety. And that's how we saw that criminals started to use AI much more and early than businesses even started to use all these benefits from AI. And that was one of the first thoughts about okay, we should do something. And I am an entrepreneur guy and that's why, also, the idea was okay, what could we do? And that's how we launched this, the Rockside AI initiative.

Ivan: 3:41

We just launched it in January, so a few months ago. And what is that? It's initiative. That means that it's not a product and solution. It's like non-profit project. We are from one side, we are doing a lot of research and we will public them for free to increase awareness about this risk. We will make some educational things. Of course we will try to develop solutions and we are already doing that. From another side, the main idea is to join community about that, to discuss, maybe to launch any standards and also to talk about that, because if we will not talk about that and we will think that oh, it's so scary, we could not talk about that, nothing will change.

Craig: 4:32

Yeah, I wanted to talk a little bit about social links. So you gather publicly available data not only on the visible web, but from the dark web as well. Not only on the visible web, but from the dark web as well. Use social links to understand criminal networks or identify individuals involved in those networks. Can you tell us how that works?

Ivan: 5:16

Yeah, and think that it will be interesting to know that there are 1 billion websites now and this is only 4% of internet. That's why, when I even now call the internet honestly, I mean all digital space and 96% of the data in internet are in darknet. So that's why another name of internet surface web. Yeah, and that's why darknet, dark web, dark web. So that's why how we started and we realized that there are a lot of different places. Where are the information? And we should look at that.

Ivan: 6:03

I will even rephrase it like you know that we are more powerful than Google Engine, because Google indexed only data that you could see, or sites that you could see with standard browsers. We could find the data that are invisible for standard browsers. So that's the easy way to explain. But the idea, yes, how it started, that a lot of people started to put their information anywhere in the digital sphere. So Facebook is just the first example, because we all know that this was one of the first and famous, even for now social network. But it's not about that. The story is that it was the first steps of data migration from any kind of internal sources to open sources, and this also that we saw, and I see even now that this digital hygiene of the people hygiene it's near the zero. We even don't think about what are we doing, could someone see it? And so on and so on. That's why it's usually like black and white yin and yang principle, because from one side, we could find that and help to law enforcement to catch the criminals, because there are a lot of digital footprints, how we call it, because there are a lot of digital footprints, how we call it, and there are a lot of interesting stories how digital identificators of us are connected between each other, like any IP addresses, emails, ids and so on, so on. So we could see the full picture of that and from one side, we see it and we are trying to educate the people. Also, to show guys like the standard principle of cybersecurity don't use the same email everywhere like a login, because all these solutions and applications they helped for us. They helped us with one crucial thing that now login is email, so everywhere your email, but that means that it's so easy to find you and to understand you and we educate it.

Ivan: 8:39

From another side, yes, we use it to help law enforcement and governments and businesses. Corporate security, information security departments from the biggest S&P 500 companies to secure their businesses, to find the criminals, and also that's why we know how criminals are using that and that's why we could help. You know, like the virus and antivirus solutions, you should understand how the viruses work to secure it, and that's how we help the companies to work with that. So, yeah, we get information from more than 500 sources, different sources. They are all public, available information. So we are fully compliant with any rules and principles because these public development formations. You could find it manually and everyone could find it, but we did an automated solution for that that could help you for one minute to see it. If you want to do it manually, you will spend days or weeks, but you also could find it. If you want to do it manually, you will spend days or weeks, but you also could find it. So that's, I mean public development information.

Craig: 9:52

How do you search the dark web? How do you connect the dark web to, say, Facebook so that you can identify people? Because the dark web is not indexed. So unless you know the address for a particular site on the dark net, you're never going to find it. I mean, there are all kinds of lists and things like that, but it's constantly changing and they're not very useful. So how do you crawl the dark net, identify sites and identify and then link them back to the visible net?

Ivan: 10:42

I will try to explain you but I will not tell all details because that's why we are the leader in OSINT sphere. For example, you have any media post or media article and you post the email like guys, if you want to write me, this is my email, so it, so it's public, we see it in mail, yeah, and of course it's very easy to identify that if you are the author of this article and you posted your own email to connect with you, that this is your email and so on. Just let's put it in our mind. Then let's go to dark web. The most interesting thing that in dark web, all messages are secured with special, open and close key and the idea that if you want to produce your own key, you should register the email. So you understand that even in dark web, you should use an email to register your account, to register your own key, secret key, and so on, so on, so on. And of course, the most professional guys, they have one unique email for any transaction and so on, so on. But we are a human being and the idea that someone is lazy, someone did a mistake and all most famous criminals who were found they did any kind of mistake and that's how we could find them. So the idea that how you could analyze that this is the same person, for example, in internet, in surface web, and in dark web, if you could connect that the email is the same. So if you will find the email here and the mail here, you could predict that maybe the same person.

Ivan: 12:50

And then one more hypothesis how to look at that. So that's why I mentioned that sometimes you know that even I have a joke like if you are, for example, walking around on the street and you see any boxes, for example, ikea delivery box or something like that you could look at that and in most cases, what you will see here the first name, the last name, the phone, the addresses, you know, like DHL delivery list who are that? So just imagine the personal data are just like a garbage on the street and you could just look at that and it's reality. I checked a lot of times. So that's how even our solution also works. So we look at a lot of different places and combine the full picture by any pieces and each of piece. It could be fully unuseful, but when you look at that all together it's like wow, yeah, inside.

Craig: 14:02

Yeah, and how do you crawl? Do you have crawlers that are going through the dark web autonomously, or is this gathering this data? Is it a manual exercise where you have an army of people searching through the dark web?

Ivan: 14:21

no, uh, it's all automated and I will tell that there are really different methods and types, how we are doing that. In like 90 percent of cases, we are doing that by our own and this is our own solution. And, of course, there are some companies on the market who are also doing that and we are using and so we buy the services, and there are a few really famous companies who are doing that.

Ivan: 14:59

We have more than 500 customers, more than 90 countries, and we decided to and we are still doing that because we did the first project and we decided to check how many breaches in Darknet connected to corporate emails and we found a lot, even from Ministry of Media, ministry of Defense, ministry of Interior, the whole country. What does it mean? That the devices of the employees of Ministry of Defense, some countries are infected and every day they have breaches. Just imagine what is going on. Yeah, of course we notified them, we tell them they did some things with that and that's why we just continue to do it monthly, and we decided that we will make the deep research and I will also, uh, use it in our Dark Side AI initiative to show that, guys, we could find it. So just imagine what criminals with AI could do with that and why you are not doing something really crucial with that.

Craig: 16:12

Yeah, yeah, and just for listeners, you mentioned OSINT a little while ago. That's open source intelligence and that's what Social Links is doing. You're relying on open source, you know, social media platforms, news articles, academic papers, government reports and the dark web content to create a visualization of how everything is interconnected. Do you do visualizations, or is this just stored in a relational database or something?

Ivan: 17:02

I should mention that we don't collect all this data. It's illegal. Oh, so our solution works in real time. So that's why I mentioned we are like Google, I mean that it's changing in real time. So that's also we are trying. Not trying, of course, we are fully compliant and this is one of the main things that we did not store it and collect. So that's why this infrastructure is even so unique here, that it's in real time, in seconds, sometimes in maybe minutes if it's really huge query, and so on. That's why we are doing all steps of intelligence cycle. We are gathering, we are also using our own ai models to speed up investigation, to analyze it all texts, speech analysis, visual recognition and so on, so on and then we have different visualization tools like maps, tables, graphs, timelines, also to make an analytical report easy. So that's one solution and I want to mention that 10 years ago we started with the main idea that OSINT and this is like the market, the most solution I know. But now, more and more, I see and think that OSINT it's mostly methodology, like a mindset, the steps that you should do to have some values.

Ivan: 18:52

And now I realized and we also did a few steps for that how this methodology could bring the value to new industries, for example, not only to securities. For example, we launched a spin-off company for the financial sector. So we understood that in emerging markets there are more than 80% of the people in countries they could not use standard digital banking because they don't have any credit score, nothing. So they really could not use these benefits. And we understood how to make a credit score based on alternative data and the banks and loans platforms and so on. They found the benefits here. They found the benefits here and also there are a lot of ideas that we are doing with digital risk protection in healthcare, education, transportation and so on. There are huge research by McKinsey that showed that open data could unlock from five to six trillions of dollars and they called it like trillions of values to these new industries if we find the way, how to use it, and we are doing that step by step.

Ivan: 20:23

So that's why I think that this methodology, the methodology, the mindset, how to use data because you know also the interesting fact that you know also the interesting fact that we found that more than 50 percent of companies they don't know and they didn't have the benefit from their own data. So just imagine, yeah, they are not using their own data for any decision making steps. So not external data, they are not using their own data for decision making. So it's a huge problem with all of this data.

Ivan: 21:09

So when I try to explain a lot of companies, guys, there are a lot of interesting facts inside, like in cybersecurity. You know, the guy Gartner mentioned that 10 years ago the most amount of risks was inside the IT landscape, but nowadays even more risk outside the IT landscape. So that means that all the social engineering staff approaches and criminals they are trying to collect information about the victims and then use it. So that's outside and all the cybersecurity security person center and CM solution. They should start to work with public available information. They're not doing that still now. So a lot of things to be done to bring, to educate, to explain that guys, this data could help you and this also we will try to do it.

Craig: 22:20

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Ivan: 24:10

We have different options, and basic options is our solutions. So that's how our we are working only with b2g and b2b companies, so we are not working with individuals. Also, why? Because it's so difficult to to check them. Yeah, and I won't be sure who are using our solution. Of course, because it's really powerful and we have strict KYC and all these things that should be done because our holding company in the US, we have investors and one of my dreams is to be presented at NASDAQ. So we are looking at it super seriously and that's why we have SaaS solution. Of course, but for customers who want to have their own on-premise solution, we have it. So we have self-hosted version. It's something like the hybrid between SaaS and on-premise, and we have fully on-premise solution. In most cases, this is national security projects. So we started with fully SaaS, but then we saw the requests from customers that want to have another type of these implementations and we did it.

Craig: 25:43

So let's talk about the Dark Web AI initiative. So you have this solution to help companies, government agencies, law enforcement agencies explore links between potential criminal organizations and individuals that you can identify on the visible web, that you can identify on the visible web. Tell me again about what the dark web initiative is, who's involved in it and what you hope to achieve by it.

Ivan: 26:25

Yep, just let's specify. So we have a dark web monitoring and dark web solution and social links, and that's how we started and that's how I found a lot of insights and that we launched in january. I called it dark side dark side ei initiative. Why also EI? It's also the story that two years ago, we started to work with company and we even invested in this company the name of this company Bright Side EI. So what guys are doing? They are trying to use EI to defense the employees of the companies from the EI that criminals are using, and that's why they called their company BrightSight and it was so cool.

Ivan: 27:22

And then you know, when I spent in 2024 a lot of times in the US yes, I am basically in Amsterdam, our company in the US in Amsterdam, our company in the US and I was surprised that most of people and companies are talking about how AI will help them to decrease the costs or to automate the processes or blah, blah, blah. So you see it and you know it All crazy things about AI. Everyone is talking about AI. Ten companies in YC Combinators are doing something with EI, and so on. But one more time just no one is talking about how criminals are using EI and just the fact that the cost of one fraud transaction transaction now less than 10 cents. So five years ago, four years ago, they needed the criminals 100 guys in call center who were calling and sending you messages. Now they should have two developers and a few AI agents. That's all you see, and they could attack thousands of people in just one hour. So that's how AI changed the criminal sphere also. Not only that, we see, and that's what the last point, when I realized, okay, we should do something and we should name it, and we decided that we will have a few streams here. First of all, of course, we are doing our technical solutions. So it's not the initiative, it's not about to talk or to discuss. We are really developing the solutions, and the solutions in the sphere of modern digital risk protection. So we are helping companies to monitor the digital risks about their digital assets.

Ivan: 29:19

We were thinking how to increase awareness, how to show the people about their threats, and we decided to do a lot of research and we will public them for free with a lot of statistics, and we are doing that by our own. From another side, we are doing that with partners and for the I don't know these few. Two months I received more than 50 requests on our site to collaborate together to do something, and that's, I think, really cool. So no special advertisements, you know, like nothing to do, but people decided and voted that we want to be a part of that and we are talking with them what to do. So we are open to do any research together to educate the people in community.

Ivan: 30:10

One more thing that we decided to do to think about real solution that could help to minimize this misuse of AI. For example, any standards or anything like to label AI, for example, and some methodology and solution how the AI-generated content should be labeled, just because it's so really difficult to understand. So some real steps that we could do with the businesses and governments to learn some standards. I don't like the word rules because I think in this sphere rules are not working, because what does that mean, rules? So someone decides that we could do that, not we. I mean that could be done, that not could be done, and why do we think that it's right now, in so modern technology world? So that's why I think there are no rules and there are nothing to do with, like to stop the AI development.

Ivan: 31:26

You know, sometimes we hear it on the market no, let's stop AI development. We could not stop it. Because it's a curiosity, a lot of people doing that like, okay, what could be done more? Uh, or it's so interesting, yeah. So I mean some standards, some principles, yeah. So that's few steps that we are trying to do and, of course, we are trying to do that with partnerships from companies and organizations to do. But just two months passed, but even I see these results even now that the interests are huge and we will try to keep it forward.

Craig: 32:11

And how do people get involved in the Dark Side AI initiative, and I'm sorry I called it Dark Web AI initiative, but how do people get involved in the Dark Side AI initiative? Is there a website? Do you have conferences? Do you have webinars? How are you communicating with people and brainstorming?

Ivan: 32:36

Yeah, we started, of course, with the website Darksideio and LinkedIn page for this company and we started with interesting content, to show some numbers, to show, for example, the cases that more than 90 percent of people could not understand, where ai generated content and where not even, like I think, more than 99 percent could not just realize. Yeah, and of course we could not do it by alone. So main idea to engage, involve community and I think the main thing from my side, try to lead it to engage people and help them also to do something.

Craig: 33:31

Yeah, and, and the idea then is you build this community. There's exchange of ideas within the community and then will you have, you know, maybe committees within the community working on specific solutions that are for problems that are identified. I mean, how do you see it developing?

Ivan: 33:59

Yeah, there are also a few streams that we have. We are developing our own solution, this modern digital risk protection, and we are ready to invite experts who are interested in that to develop with us or to test it. So we already did a few projects for free for big companies to show them the benefits from one side. From another side, of course, to test In reality, could we bring the value or not. The cool result is that the feedback of customers that we are outperformed than some competitors on the market, than some competitors on the market. So we just spent half a year for people to develop that and we already outperformed. Why? Because this awesome methodology and expertise for the last 10 years. Because of that. From another side, I already started a few projects with individuals and companies from different markets, even in Japan, who have their own idea to do something, and we will help them. We will help them with technology, we will help them with our expertise. Sometimes we are even ready to invest our money in that if it is really interesting, and so on.

Craig: 35:37

Yeah, you have some data about the increase of AI-driven fraud. Was this your number expected to grow from $12 billion in 2023 to $40 billion of fraud by 2027? Is that your number?

Ivan: 36:05

Yeah, and it's growing. It's growing extremely because even the most the biggest fraud in finance, when c4 paid because he received even the call from ceo zoom, call from ceo yeah, it was messages, and then it was called and he did not realize that it was AI generated CEO on the call by Zoom, and so on. So, just one more time, imagine what's going on and, yes, I see that it's growing and, of course, from one side, the areas that are in most dangerous, of course it's finance, because it's a lot of uh, it's about money, so of course it's one of the target for criminals. From another side, it's all that I bought content, so that's why media and all these public institutions. But from another side, we see that it's not only

about finance, because all industries are connected to that, and I think that criteria, even not about from criminals, are not about like banks have money, we should do something.

Ivan: 37:35

Yeah, they are looking at enterprises and small and medium companies that have more breaches that are not secured and then choosing the goal for them and doing that. So, unfortunately, it's not like something that only the most richest and biggest company could be the targets. No, that we see and why. Also, you know, when criminals had hundreds of people to do something. The ROI of that should be bigger Now. Few developers in the AI decrease the costs for any attacks, and that's why they could choose not only enterprises for that decrease the costs for any attacks, and that's why they could choose not only enterprises for that, and that's the change.

Craig: 38:45

Yeah, so you're inviting enterprises, researchers, policymakers, individual experts, et cetera to join the initiative, and to do so they can start by visiting wwwdarksideaiio. Is that right?

Ivan: 39:07

Yes, really We'll be glad. We have a lot of experience and expertise in all this data, so if you have ideas or if you see any risks and you want to research it, we will be glad to help you and to do something together to benefit and to secure the world, the digital sphere and our lives, definitely, and then social links.

Craig: 39:33

how does somebody benefit? And to secure the world, the digital sphere and our lives? Definitely yeah.

Ivan: 39:40

And then social links how does somebody contact social links if they want to use your solutions? The same thing that sociallinksio, the website, and you could also send us the request and you could find a lot of open cases, materials about social links. So, honestly, it's much, much easier to find us and to see. We produced a lot of content, landscape documents, so there are a lot of things how you could find us for the last 10 years and that's why the at DarkSide AI, we just launched two months that we are on the market.

Craig: 40:19

Yeah. And this is a global initiative. Darkside AI I'm sorry, darkside AI Is that right? You said that Social Links has customers in 90-some countries. How many countries are there participating in DarkSide AI so far?

Ivan: 40:43

Is it?

Craig: 40:43

primarily a US initiative.

Ivan: 40:46

No, there are no limits and that's also one of our main expertise that we are working with more than 90 countries and we see these, sometimes some specific cases, but sometimes not. So why? Also, I was asked an interesting question a few weeks ago who are those criminals? So you know, like, who are they? What do you mean criminals? And one of the persons said that it's like I don't know like few students who are doing some bad things, but criminals.

Ivan: 41:39

It's the same huge enterprises with the legal department, sales department, marketing department, security department. In reality, it's a huge organization with a lot of professionals and if you will look at the structure in this company, it's the same that you could see in the biggest S&P 500 companies. They're super professional guys and, based on that, when they are doing something, in most cases, they are also global. They don't want to look like one country and one market, why, this is a digital sphere. You could do anything from anywhere. So there are a lot of, of course, there are a lot of, uh, regional specific projects.

Ivan: 42:29

Uh, and one of the last specific that I saw it was connected to Japan. Yeah, because, uh, there are a lot of specific in Japan in reality, even, for example, language and so on, so on. But from another side, even Japanese organizations are not secured now. So I mean I could not tell any limits or ideas that someone has saved. In reality, I don't see it. So that's why it's fully global. There are no any limitations, and I see that we already did it in so many countries and that's why that we could bring value to any new. So how many? There are something like 250 countries in the world. So, okay, we already helped 100. So just 100 more.

Craig: 43:32

Okay, okay, well, let's leave it there. Is there anything I didn't ask that you would like to say to listeners?

Ivan: 43:44

I think that one thing, just to finalize it, and it's one of my favorites that I believe more that we should educate ourselves. So, from one side, we, or a lot of companies, are trying to educate you, to explain you about the threats, about cybersecurity, basic things about digital hygiene and so on and so on. But we should realize it. For example, I have two children my daughter is eight and my son 13. And I already helped my son to find the cybersecurity courses for children. To look at that, because they will live in this sphere in this world and we should start it. They will live in this sphere in this world and we should start it. For example, the same like in my children's international school. They watched the cinema.

Ivan: 44:52

There was a cinema on Netflix about social media platform, how they influence on people, how they influence on people, how they influence on children, because you know, there are a lot of children who are fully disappointed because no one like them. What's mean? No one like you? Because I have not so many likes, uh, in any social media. So just the mindset of children yeah, they are not successful because they have a lot of likes. They have a small amount of likes. So that's, and it's a cool example also that if you will start with your children to look at the sphere, you will find a lot of interesting things for you. So that's why you should think about yourself by your own, and that's one. You should think about yourself by your own, and that's one of my advice. Start it immediately now, don't wait anything.

Craig: 45:45

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