This article was updated on August 18, 2025 with updated information
Stolen data bartered on the dark web is often the starting point for future attacks; Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) found that 54% of ransomware victims’ credentials were discovered in infostealer logs, and 40% of those logs included corporate emails. The attacks happened quickly, too — the median time between credentials appearing on the dark web and ransomware attacks was found to be two days.
If your team can find stolen credentials as soon as they appear on the dark web, you can be proactive about preventing an attack with specialized dark web search engines. Security teams can leverage automated Threat Exposure Management solutions to monitor sources across the dark web, including forums and marketplaces, as well as other sources like Telegram.
Understanding Dark Web Search Engines
What are dark web search engines?
Dark web search engines are specialized tools that allow you to access the dark web, portions of the deep web that aren’t indexed by traditional search engines. The dark web is hidden from regular browsers and search engines thanks to its registry operator, which differs from the infrastructure used by the clear web. The most well known browser is Tor, which stands for The Onion Router.
What search engines can access the dark web?
There are a variety of search engines available that will allow you and your team to access the dark web. These include tools like:
- Torch
- Ahmia
- Haystack
- DuckDuckGo
- Candle
- Not Evil
- Dark Search
- Onion Search
Understanding the Impact of Dark Web Search Engines
Stolen and leaked data is bought and sold in parts of the dark web, as is malware as a service that can be used to attack your networks. By searching and monitoring the dark web, you can catch threats and stolen data before your assets are exploited by threat actors.
What is the impact of criminal activity on the dark web?
Criminals refine their techniques on the dark web, form gangs, and sell each other tools that help them steal your data. Because malware is being shared among criminals, even those who can’t code, are able to launch attacks. Often, criminals use dark web forums and marketplaces to sell and distribute stealer logs, the product of infostealer malware. Infostealers infect browsers, exfiltrating data like passwords, session cookies, and tokens. These credentials are then used by other criminals to perpetrate future attacks.
What is the impact of an attack?
Cyber attacks cause many problems, from lack of trust in your brand to the interruption of business operations. The consequences are also financial: the average cost of a data breach is estimated to be $4.9 million. Such costs include legal fees, regulatory sanctions, the cost of finding and remediating vulnerabilities, and other related costs.
Dark Web Search Engines and Flare
How can security teams best monitor the dark web?
Monitoring the dark web doesn’t necessarily mean manual searches. Tools like Flare empower your team to conduct reconnaissance on the dark web, scanning for stolen data and other information that might jeopardize your systems and networks.
How does Flare monitor the dark web?
Flare monitors thousands of channels across sources as diverse as Telegram, the dark web and I2P. The platform automatically collects, analyzes, and contextualizes dark web data to provide your team with information relevant to your organization. Flare currently monitors 8,000 cybercrime communities and 2 million threat actor profiles. Our platform has also ingested the data of more than 70 million stealer logs.
What are the key features of Flare’s dark web monitoring solution?
- Automation: Your analysts can’t manually search the dark web constantly. Flare automates the process to give you 24/7 coverage. By doing this, Flare cuts down dark web investigation times by up to 95%, providing analysts with an easy-to-use platform that automatically provides context-rich events and simple pivots.
- A proactive security stance: By actively seeking stolen data out, you can catch a breach early and take steps to protect your data. Flare’s AI assistant offers the context around each notification, so your team can act on the information that matters.
- Visibility into threats: Flare’s data theft monitoring solution scans the dark and clear web, as well as illicit Telegram channels, to find leaks before an attack happens.
- Immediate alerts: Flare cuts through the noise, sending only relevant alerts to your team, so you will know as soon as information appears on the dark web or a paste and dump site.
- Insights customized to your organization: As attack surfaces grow ever-larger, data leaks and breaches have also increased. Currently organizations face coverage issues that prevent them from finding data leaks before they become data breaches. Insights from Flare’s contextualized notifications give your team a better understanding of your risk and what actions to take.
- Ease of use: Flare’s platform sets up in 30 minutes and integrates with leading SIEM/SOAR/ticketing tools, so your team can start monitoring cyber risk immediately.
Dark Web Search Engines and Flare
The Flare Threat Exposure Management solution empowers organizations to proactively detect, prioritize, and mitigate the types of exposures commonly exploited by threat actors. Our platform automatically scans the clear & dark web and prominent threat actor communities 24/7 to discover unknown events, prioritize risks, and deliver actionable intelligence you can use instantly to improve security.
Flare integrates into your security program in 30 minutes and often replaces several SaaS and open source tools. See what external threats are exposed for your organization by signing up for our free trial.
