Web information aids security professionals in understanding potential weaknesses in their own systems, threats that might come from outside organizations' networks, and prospective threats that might come via the World Wide Web.
In reality, automated tests that can find the presence of potential malware, phishing links, various types of fraud, information breaches, and counterfeiting schemes are performed using this database of public Web data.
Web scraping: What is it?
Large volumes of data can be automatically gathered from websites via web scraping. The majority of this data is unstructured and is shown in HTML format, t is transformed into structured data in a spreadsheet or database so that it can be used in a variety of applications.
These include utilizing online services, certain APIs, or even writing one's own code from scratch for web scraping. The company doing the scraping is aware of the sites to visit and the information to be collected. There are APIs on a lot of big websites, including Google, Twitter, Facebook, StackOverflow, etc., which let users access their data in a structured manner.
How Do Web Scrapers Operate?
Web scrapers have the power to extract all the data from specified websites or the precise data that a user requires. If you wanted to find out what kinds of peelers were available, for instance, you might want to scrape an Amazon page, but you might only need information on the models of the various peelers, not the feedback from customers.
Therefore, the URLs are first provided when a web scraper intends to scrape a website. Then, all of the websites' HTML code is loaded. A more sophisticated scraper might also extract all of the CSS and Javascript parts. The scraper then extracts the necessary data from this HTML code and outputs it in the manner that the user has chosen. The data is typically stored as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV file, but it is also possible to save it in other formats, such as JSON files.
Cybersecurity Via Web Scraping
1. Monitoring for Potential Attacks on Institutions
Some of the top firms' security teams use open Web data collecting networks to acquire data on potential online threat actors and analyze malware.
Additionally, they continuously and automatically check the public domain for potentially harmful websites or links using Web scraping techniques. For instance, security teams can instantly recognize several phishing websites that aim to steal important customer or business data like usernames, passwords, or credit card information.
2. Scraping the Web for Cybersecurity
Web data collecting is used by a variety of cybersecurity companies to evaluate the risk that various domains pose for fraud and viruses. In order to properly assess the risk, cybersecurity firms can utilize this to contact potentially harmful websites as a 'victim' or a legitimate user to see how the website might target an unwary visitor.
3. Analysis and Reduction of Threats
Public Web data collecting networks are used by threat intelligence companies to get information from a variety of sources, including blogs, public social media channels, and hackers, in order to find fresh information on a range of potential dangers.
Their insights are based on this Web data collecting, which they subsequently disseminate to a wide range of customers that want to strengthen their own system security.
Despite being utilized often in business, lawful web scraping is still a touchy subject. Where personal information is scraped, this is the most evident. Users of LinkedIn, for instance, are aggressively marketing their personal information since the platform essentially functions as a professional CV showcase. Less desirable is having those details gathered in bulk, compiled, and sold to random people.
An organization's visibility and capacity to respond to online threats across the large online terrain in real-time are both improved by integrating with Web data collecting networks.
