Introduction
The National Crime Agency (NCA) leads the UK’s fight against serious and organised crime, protecting the public by identifying and dismantling organised criminal networks. Operating at the forefront of law enforcement, NCA officers and analysts build a comprehensive intelligence picture of these threats while delivering specialist capabilities in collaboration with partner agencies.
The Challenge
As serious and organised crime evolves, so too must the skills and capabilities required to investigate and disrupt the most dangerous and technologically sophisticated offenders, including those operating on the Dark Web. To maintain its proactive edge, the National Crime Agency must harness emerging technologies to deliver world-leading capabilities in intelligence collection and real-time data analysis.
National Strategic Assessment of Serious and Organised Crime
What We Did
By combining the analysis of anonymous decentralised networks and cryptographic protocols with deep learning graph neural networks (GNNs), we developed an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven toolkit to accurately classify Dark Web network traffic and generate actionable intelligence in real-time.
Key Outcomes
Our AI-driven Dark Web toolkit enabled the National Crime Agency, in collaboration with international law enforcement partners, to identify and significantly disrupt Dark Web marketplaces facilitating illicit activities relating to child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA). Furthermore, our work supported the creation of the next generation of intelligence techniques capable of analysing bulk data derived from Dark Web monitoring and related data sources.