June 18, 2025

ISS Europe 2025 Recap

For over a decade, ISS World has served as the primary nexus where cutting-edge cybersecurity technology meets real-world law enforcement needs. 

The conference bills itself as “the world’s largest gathering of Regional Law Enforcement, Intelligence and Homeland Security Analysts, Telecoms as well as Financial Crime Investigators responsible for Cyber Crime Investigation, Electronic Surveillance and Intelligence Gathering”—and it delivered. 

DarkOwl has attended ISS for the last 10 years. It has become an effective medium for reinforcing (and growing) Darknet intelligence inside government bodies. 

What sets ISS apart isn’t just the vendor floor. The first day is entirely dedicated to hands-on training and deep-dive technical sessions. These aren’t theoretical presentations—they’re practical workshops covering the techniques used in active investigations. 

2025’s Sessions

Advanced Geolocation Techniques: New methods for pinpointing suspect locations when traditional GPS data isn’t available. 

Circumventing Masking Technologies: Practical approaches to dealing with VPNs, Tor, and other anonymization tools (on which suspects increasingly rely). 

Tracing Methodologies: Advanced techniques for following digital breadcrumbs across multiple platforms and jurisdictions. 

AI-Enhanced Investigations: How artificial intelligence is changing digital forensics and evidence analysis. 

The European conference brought together law enforcement agencies, government intelligence units, and commercial technology partners from across the continent and beyond. These connections prove invaluable as cases inevitably cross European borders, or require specialized technical expertise of international bodies like EUROPOL. 

The combination of vendor demonstrations, hands-on training, and peer networking creates an environment where you can evaluate new technologies alongside the investigators who’ll actually use them. 

Key Takeaways

✅ Geopolitical Realities 

Many representatives came from nations on the border of conflict zones. Unsurprisingly, there’s appetite for creative, proactive protection and detection technology to support time- and resource-drained agencies.  

 ✅ OSINT Emphasis

Both OSINT-native and OSINT-adjacent technology was out in force this year. 16 sessions were devoted to the subject of OSINT, and 10 sessions devoted to Darknet investigations alone on the conference agenda.    

 ✅ Organised Crime Challenges 

Anti-OCG teams worldwide were seeking strategic, not tactical, answers from SOCMINT and DARKINT resources. Their challenge is fighting an almost symmetric enemy, so the traditional profiling playbook is at best ineffective and worst a waste of much needed police resources.   

✅ Crypto-Fuelled Destabilisation

There was strong representation from jurisdictions increasingly vulnerable to rapidly scaling crypto-fuelled crime in Central Asia. 

Live Demonstration of DarkOwl Vision: Darknet Intelligence for Profiling, Crypto Tracing & Market Dynamics 

DarkOwl’s speaking session in Prague looked at Darknet discovery and criminal profiling using DarkOwl Vision. 

With breach data and stealer logs the talk of the town in threat intelligence, DarkOwl emphasised the holistic value of following leads through both Dark Web fora and marketplaces, not just the contents of leaks themselves.  

For example, Lindsay (DarkOwl’s Regional Director) established the link between a Hacker Site’s Twitter account (previously breached) and their live underground administrator, complete with reputation score and real-life identity.  

Likewise, using the example of ‘Greavys’ – the pseudonym used by a crypto criminal responsible for stealing $250 million in Bitcoin last year – we unmasked a real name & physical address from an (easy) combination of Telegram UserID pivots and an age-old underground doxxing site. 

DarkOwl Vision provides a user-friendly interface with powerful querying capabilities to search, monitor, and create alerts for critical information. DarkOwl Vision is used to support local and federal police investigations, as well as work done in intelligence/fusion centers and federal agencies to uncover human trafficking, opioid selling, terrorism, crypto tracing and other illegal activity, making it the perfect tool for this audience.  

See you in Singapore! Meet us at an upcoming event!