Georgia Institute of Technology's applied research arm has launched an early warning system to help organizations prepare for possible cyberattacks.

The Blackforest system collects information from hacker forums and other sites where malware developers post new code to advertise its availability and ask questions or seek feedback from other code writers.

Other discussions BlackForest can tap into include planning of distributed denial-of-service attacks, advice given on network break-ins and the posting of stolen digital assets, such as payment card data and login credentials.

By collecting the information and relating it to past activities, the system can help organizations understand the nature of the threat and whether it's building toward a possible attack.

For attacks that have already taken place, BlackForest can help identify the source, so organizations can track and prepare for future developments.

All the information is stored in a graph database, which is a storage system in which every element contains a direct pointer to its adjacent elements. Index lookups found in other types of databases is not necessary in a graph data store.

According to Bryan Massey, associate head of GTRI's Threat Intelligence Branch, since no technology can predict the future, BlackForrest won't be able to say for sure whether or when an attack will occur.

 "It's not going to necessarily predict an attack," Massey said. "It's going to alert you to the fact that things are happening more quickly and could potentially be a threat in the future." 

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