Dark Web: Beneath The True Layer

Hello everyone! Welcome to another blog. I am sure by now everyone has heard about Dark Web commonly known as the epicenter of illegal online activities. Many say Dark Web as the vast secret cyber underworld which is used to buy anything you can imagine and that’s true but the other argument is that it gives people freedom as it can stop government from overreaching their boundaries. So what is Dark Web all about? Let’s dive deep into this subject and know about it much better.

The Basics

The Web can be defined into three categories. These are Surface web, Deep web and Dark web.

1.       Surface Web: Basically Surface web is everything that can be found through search engines. The websites in the surface web is indexed by search engines. Google, Yahoo, Bing are good examples of search engines.

2.       Deep Web: Deep web is hidden from conventional search engines and it contains unindexed websites. The user can only access it if he/she is an authorized person to access it and has any permission like Url, username and password etc. Deep web is used to store most personal information like Cloud storages, any organization’s personal data, military data or also medical records.

3.       Dark Web: Finally it’s the Dark Web. Here, sites are intentionally hidden from search engines. Sites in the Dark web can only be accessed through special browsers which use masked IP addresses to hide the identity of the visitors. Dark Web is also known as the most dangerous part of Internet because many illegal activities such as drug dealing, human trafficking, Arms trafficking etc.

 The interesting fact is that, the Surface web which we normally use is just about 4% of the total internet. Dark web is about 6% and Deep Web is about 90%. Let’s see the origin of Dark web.

Origin of Dark Web

In 1969 a couple of university students sent the world’s first computers to compete a message. It was sent on ARPANET an early ancestor to the Internet. This concept of connecting the computers together was a radical idea at that time. But ever since there has been internet or any form of internet, people have used it for illegal online activity. In fact, one of the first ever e-commerce transaction was a drug deal in 1970. It was done between two students at MIT and Stanford. These early examples were showing that there might be something big coming in the future.

In the mid-1990s things started getting hot. A technology called TOR was created. TOR stands for The Onion Router and is a browser which allows users to exchange information anonymously online. Peer to peer networks like TOR are the Dark web. For the Dark Web to exist it needs anonymity. Tor manages this by hiding the identity of the user by bouncing the connection through three different servers around the world adding a layer of encryption each time. Now you might be thinking that TOR was developed by a group of criminals or black hat Hackers trying to evade government control. But the truth is TOR was invented by US Naval Research Laboratory to allow intelligence personal to transfer information securely.

Further in 2002, another agency of US Department of Defense known as DARPA developed Tor (The Onion Router) and released it into the public domain for everyone to use. The reason was so that they could stay anonymous - it would be harder to distinguish the government's messages between spies if thousands of other people were using the same system for lots of different things. Tor now hosts roughly 30,000 hidden sites. It's called The Onion Router because it uses the technique of onion routing- making websites anonymous through layers of encryption. Most websites are also hosted on the .onion domain.

*But it’s important to know that without Tor, Dark web would still exist because TOR is simply one web browser to access Dark web to which there are many similar browsers.

How does the Dark Web work with Onion encryption?

As you might already know, most Dark Web sites that have made the news end in an onion address. The name "onion" here really does make a huge allusion to how the Dark Web works. Every packet of information is sent via layers of encryption and protective coding — much like how onions have protective layers, too.

Tor works by encrypting all the user’s identification and then passing the user's IP address through Tor nodes. This sends all the information through randomized relays that only reveal small portions of information at every time. As a result, tracing it is fairly difficult.

This is called Onion encryption, and every layer makes it harder to track down something identifying about the person's identity. For the most part, Onion encryption is considered to be untraceable.

However, it is possible to de-anonymize users by finding weaknesses in the broswer that Tor is attached to. Tracking down website owners and site users has happened in the past — and as darknet stuff continues to grow in popularity, it will continue to happen.

The best explanation so far has been published by Daniel Prince, Associate Director Security at Lancaster University, "Just like the forest, the dark web hides things well – it hides actions and it hides identities. The dark web also prevents people from knowing who you are, what you are doing and where you are doing it."

"Off the paths it is almost impossible to find anything – unless you know what you’re looking for – so it feels a bit like a treasure hunt. Because really the only way to find anything in this vast forest is to be told where to look, this is how the dark web works.” This is very fascinating, considering how often raids due to the Dark Web get featured on the news.

What’s On the Dark Web?

Dark web websites usually host types of content that would get site owners in trouble if they were on the surface web. One of the more well-known sites of the dark net was The Silk Road website, a marketplace for illicit products, such as drugs, unlicensed firearms, fake IDs, and hacking tools. Though The Silk Road has been shut down, online black markets still exist, and discussion of them can be found on the surface web on sites such as darknetmarkets.org. The dark web is used by all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons - but it's not surprising that it's used for illegal activity.

A study by the University of Portsmouth in 2014 found that the most wanted type of content on Tor was child porn, followed by black markets for goods such as drugs, personal details and even guns. Some reports said that you can find Arms like AK-47 to rocket launchers if you look hard enough. Criminals have also discovered selling fake university degrees and certifications and passports. You might be surprised to know that you can find stolen identities and passwords for individual bank accounts for sale on Dark web.

There are also a lot of sites on the dark web promising to double your money or sell you stolen credit card numbers. These kinds of websites are more often than not scam sites that aim to part fools with their money and take their bitcoin, which is non-refundable.

However, for others the dark web has positive uses. For example, it can be used to avoid a national firewall, such as China, where users are normally blocked from accessing hidden sites. It can also be used as a tool for whistleblowing - infamous website. WikiLeaks is hosted on the dark web, allowing whistleblowers to anonymously upload classified information to the press. (Guys comment down below if you want upcoming blog on ‘WikiLeaks’).

How to Safely Access Dark Web

As we explained before, you can’t just access the dark web through a normal web browser. You’ll need to use a special dark web browser, and while there are a few floating around, the most popular and widely-used one is a browser called The Onion Router, or TOR. Not to be confused with the satirical news site The Onion; TOR is a web browser that keeps your identity a secret by spoofing your IP address. This means that you largely can’t be tracked while you’re browsing the dark web. However if you use a regular search engine such as Google you’ll still be tracked, so most dark web users use a search engine like DuckDuckGo, which places an emphasis on protecting your privacy.

But before you begin searching the dark web, you’ll usually need the specific address of the website you want to go to. Dark web sites don’t have your usual www or World Wide Web designation. In order to protect anonymity, dark web addresses are usually a long string of characters usually followed by the domain “.onion”

A lot of these dark web sites can be found on The Hidden Wiki, which acts as a sort of roadmap to the dark web. If you want to be extra safe, you’ll also want to use a virtual private network, or VPN, that masks your IP address again, just so that nobody at all can track you unless you want them to.

Is The Dark Web Safe?

The dark web is a lot like a zoo with dangerous animals. You can take a look at what’s out there and observe, but if you try to interact with its denizens, then you could get seriously hurt. The dark web is a playground for hackers and other unsavoury people who aren’t all too friendly, but as long as you have a game plan and stick to it, you should be fine.

If you’re just aiming to see what’s going on in the dark web like a digital tourist, then by all means, go for it. However, if you want to purchase products or services on the dark web, then you have to know that they’re not entirely safe, and could carry some very harsh real life consequences.

Should I visit the Dark Web?

For most of us, the short answer is that there's no reason to: unless you're really paranoid about your privacy or you're doing something that really needs anonymity, such as reporting on repressive regimes or crime syndicates or trying to bypass state censorship, there's no real reason to venture onto the Dark Web at all - not least because it slows down your browsing.

CONCLUSION: Personally I feel like this technology is absolutely fascinating but not completely safe. Many of its users do participate in illegal dealings, and it may not be the safest place for us to be exploring on a whim. If you ever do decide to explore the dark web, make sure you have ample protections.

*Question for you readers: Do you think we need to find something like Dark Web for privacy reason? Something which is safe and 100% legal? Post your answers in the comment section. 

Thank you for reading the Blog.  Were you aware about the information mentioned in the blog? I hope the blog is helpful to you all. If you have any queries related to this topic, write them in the comment section. I request every reader to 'Share' this blog to your friends and family members who are unaware about this topic. Peace.

*The writing of this article is only for knowledge. I don’t promote illegal activities and I am not responsible for any illegal activity.

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