Gathering and analyzing identity leaks for a proactive warning of affected users

Abstract

Identity theft is a common consequence of successful cyber-attacks. Criminals steal identity data in order to either (mis)use the data themselves or sell entire identity collections of such data to other parties. Warning the victims of identity theft is crucial to avoid or limit the damage caused by identity misuse. However, in order to provide proactive warnings to victims in a timely fashion, the leaked identity data has to be available. Within this paper we present a methodology to gather and analyze leaked identity data to enable proactive warnings of victims.