{"id":61032,"date":"2018-05-11T17:00:30","date_gmt":"2018-05-11T15:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=61032"},"modified":"2018-05-10T08:19:04","modified_gmt":"2018-05-10T06:19:04","slug":"02-05-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=61032","title":{"rendered":"Webhose takes aim at the Dark Web"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Israel21c\"<\/a>Webhose takes aim at the Dark Web<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Brian Blum<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Mr. Robot, watch out: An Israeli startup is serving notice that the hidden is now visible and even your bitcoins won\u2019t save you from the law.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Image by Alexander Geiger\/Shutterstock.com<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Fans of the popular TV show \u201cMr. Robot,\u201d which dives deep into the world of shady hackers and the Dark Web that lurks beyond its better-known counterpart, take note: An Israeli startup is serving notice that the hidden is now visible and even your bitcoins won\u2019t shield you from the long arm of the law.<\/span><\/p>\n

Just as Google crawls the World Wide Web to index the sites we want to find, Bnei Brak-based\u00a0Webhose<\/a>\u00a0has developed a technology that can scour the anonymous part of the Internet accessed through a special browser called Tor. Webhose can even bypass the Captcha systems meant to keep out creepy crawlers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Law-enforcement agencies, cybersecurity companies and large financial institutions have all expressed interest, Webhose CEO Ran Geva tells ISRAEL21c. That\u2019s not surprising: The Dark Web has long been a sanctuary for those dealing in all things illegal: drugs, weapons, money laundering, pornography and more.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s an area ripe for innovation and Webhose has taken the lead.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no Google for the Dark Web,\u201d Geva says. \u201cNo one is doing search engine optimization there because the sites on the Dark Web don\u2019t necessarily want to be found!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Webhose has employed what Geva calls \u201cethical hackers\u201d \u2013 experts hired by companies to find vulnerabilities in their sites \u2014 to help get behind the Dark Web\u2019s Captcha protection.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ran Geva, CEO of Webhose. Photo: courtesy<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Geva has a warning for criminals using cryptocurrencies: You cannot really hide. Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, is actually \u201cless secure than a bank,\u201d he points out.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAll transactions are recorded on a ledger that\u2019s shared openly across the network. It\u2019s anonymous, but if you put your Bitcoin wallet address on the visible web \u2013 perhaps for a completely different, even legitimate reason \u2013 or if you share some identifying detail like your ICQ, Twitter or Facebook handle, we can see what you did with your money. Law enforcement can then ask for the IP of the user that posted and make the connection.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Webhose is not just a science project. The company is earning more than $250,000 a month with a profit margin of close to 50 percent. Webhose clients include, for instance, a fintech startup in France and Luxembourg, a US startup that detects fake news and a cryptocurrency compliance watchdog.<\/span><\/p>\n

The nicest company that crawls the Web<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Most of the company\u2019s revenue is not from the Dark Web. That tool was unveiled only last year. Webhose spends most of its resources searching the \u201cvisible\u201d Internet. \u201cWe are the nicest company that crawls the Web,\u201d says Geva.\u201d We comply with everything; everyone can see what we\u2019re doing. On the Dark Web, though, it\u2019s a very different story.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Webhose doesn\u2019t do anything with the data it finds. \u201cWe focus on content collection,\u201d Geva explains. \u201cWe let our clients analyze the content.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That partly explains the company\u2019s odd name. Twitter calls the stream of tweets that come from its platform the \u201cfirehose.\u201d Webhose applies that same concept to data it collects from the Internet, creating what Geva dubs a \u201cfirehose for the web.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Webhose\u2019s Guy Mor, left, and Ran Geva at a trade show. Photo: courtesy<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Geva\u2019s previous company, Omgili (Oh My God I Love It) was a search engine for message boards, an area where Google wasn\u2019t so successful back in 2007 when Geva, now 41, started Omgili. As the initial crawler technology evolved, Geva imagined using it to track publicity campaigns on the Internet. He even built an app to do so, but it wasn\u2019t reliable enough.<\/span><\/p>\n

Geva kept plugging away until the technology worked. This is what enables Webhose to deliver highly structured data to its clients, \u201cmuch more than the title, snippet and summary Google provides.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Webhose organizes message-board posts, blogs, news, reviews, ratings and stock data, plus it has historical pricing information on some 20 million products, making it an ideal tool for e-commerce businesses and banks looking for patterns to ferret out fraud.<\/span><\/p>\n

Webhose stores everything it\u2019s collected in machine-readable format on its own databases. Customers tap into that database by creating an XML or JSON feed. Webhose has a nearly four-year archive of millions of websites, although the company only keeps 30 days\u2019 worth of data live on its system, in order to keep searches snappy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Webhose is not the only company structuring data around the web. Silicon-Valley-based Import.io uses machine learning to return relevant results to customers. DeepCrawl, which has its headquarters in London, is popular with SEO providers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Webhose sells the data it collects on a freemium basis. A student, for example, can make \u201cup to 1,000 API calls a month, which can return up to 100 results each,\u201d Geva explains. \u201cSo in theory you could get access to up to 100,000 articles or message-board posts for free. After that pricing starts at $50 per month. We have tens of thousands of free users.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The one area where Webhose is not free: searching the Dark Web. So, can Webhose keep a real-world Mr. Robot from hacking the world\u2019s banks and ushering in financial ruin?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe love that show,\u201d says Geva. \u201cBut it\u2019s much crazier than what we\u2019re doing. Still, it feels good to be useful on that front.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Webhose takes aim at the Dark Web Brian Blum Mr. Robot, watch out: An Israeli startup is serving notice that the hidden is now visible and even your bitcoins won\u2019t save you from the law. Image by Alexander Geiger\/Shutterstock.com Fans of the popular TV show \u201cMr. Robot,\u201d which dives deep into the world of shady […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61032"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61032"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61048,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61032\/revisions\/61048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}