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Fighting Cybercrime: CFLW and Iknaio combine Dark Web monitoring with Cryptoasset Analytics

This partnership unlocks the power of data-driven forensics to combat cyber-enabled crime by a seamless integration of Dark Web and cryptoasset analytics.

The Hague and Vienna, 5 July 2022 – The Netherlands’ CFLW Cyber Strategies BV (CFLW) and Austria’s Iknaio Cryptoasset Analytics GmbH (Iknaio) are proud to announce that they have signed a Cooperation Agreement to co-create a seamless solution combining CFLW’s strength in Dark Web analytics with Iknaio’s capabilities in cryptoasset analytics. To this end, the parties have agreed to provide their respective customers with access to both services, effectively bundling their products together in a joint offering. This collaboration will unlock the power of data-driven forensics to close the investigative loop in fighting high-tech crime.

Co-creation as a Game Changer
Since cyber-enabled crime is evolving quickly to become more sophisticated, it is likely to impact society on an unprecedented scale if not addressed adequately. Therefore, investigators must engage in cross-border cooperation and continuous innovation to keep the fight against cybercrime on an even keel. For example, it has been observed that organized criminal groups who are behind multiple crimes tend to compartmentalize their activities to avoid detection. If technology can help investigators identify the common actor(s) behind a series of incidents, this would lead to powerful new methodologies to solve more cases and scale up the outcomes of law enforcement operations.

This will require a shift from thinking about data points to networked thinking, which takes into consideration the interactions between various nodes within the investigative space. Having full, autonomous control of the data allows technology to piece together correlations before settling on a high-level conclusion about the nature, root cause, and extent of the cybercrime, speeding up investigations significantly. This supersedes the use of legacy technologies and pre-defined dashboards.

“Digital innovation in the EU has never been more exciting. At the same time, online spaces can be understood as an extension of society, and law enforcement must have the necessary tools at their disposal to effectively respond to online threats. In this regard, this co-creation approach allows both CFLW and Iknaio to acquire a deeper understanding of each other’s work, enabling them to devise technological breakthroughs for a safer cyberspace.” says Dr. Mark van Staalduinen, Managing Director of CFLW. Dark Web Monitor is a CFLW Intelligence Service comprising an open-source intelligence (OSINT) repository that provides insights into criminal and fraudulent activities facilitated by the Dark Web and cryptoassets.

Towards a Glass Box Approach
At the same time, technologies exist in the context of societal needs with regards to transparency, explainability, and accountability. Users often struggle to trust the decisions and answers that technological black boxes provide, given the potential for bias or ethical risks. Bearing this in mind, the methodologies of both companies emphasize verifiability of source codes and forensic reliability of information obtained, so as to minimize random errors and flawed assumptions. In this connection, they aim to equip security professionals with strategic insights and operational perspectives to combat cybercrimes, drilling down into granular details to establish forensic assurance while explicitly sharing how and why they reach their conclusions.

“We strongly believe that we need a European solution with full data sovereignty to assist investigators fighting cybercrime. Moreover, as cybercrime is evolving quickly, we need to join forces with industry partners to deliver cutting edge technology. Together with CFLW, we’re able to provide our customers with a seamless interface to solve various problems. We are convinced that this is a major step in successfully fighting cybercrime.” says Karl Zettl, co-founder and CEO of Iknaio. To mitigate illicit activities with the ultimate goal of making the use of cryptoassets safer, Iknaio provides services around GraphSense, a cryptoasset analytics platform with an emphasis on full data sovereignty, algorithmic transparency, and scalability.

About Iknaio Cryptoasset Analytics GmbH
Founded in 2021, Iknaio provides operational services around the open-source analytics platform GraphSense. It consists of an API for highly efficient forensic tasks and a interactive dashboard that allows users to visualize and understand cryptoasset flows, hosted in Europe. Iknaio offers these services to investigators from national authorities, law enforcement agencies, security companies, and the payment industry to help them uncover and trace criminally relevant crypto-based transactions in detail. Iknaio also offers several customer-specific extensions built on-top-of GraphSense.

For more information on Iknaio, please visit https://www.ikna.io.