Understanding the Dark Web
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An Evolving Threat the Deep Web
8 An Evolving Threat The Deep Web Learning Objectives distribute 1. Explain the differences between the deep web and darknets.or 2. Understand how the darknets are accessed. 3. Discuss the hidden wiki and how it is useful to criminals. 4. Understand the anonymity offered by the deep web. 5. Discuss the legal issues associated withpost, use of the deep web and the darknets. The action aimed to stop the sale, distribution and promotion of illegal and harmful items, including weapons and drugs, which were being sold on online ‘dark’ marketplaces. Operation Onymous, coordinated by Europol’s Europeancopy, Cybercrime Centre (EC3), the FBI, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and Eurojust, resulted in 17 arrests of vendors andnot administrators running these online marketplaces and more than 410 hidden services being taken down. In addition, bitcoins worth approximately USD 1 million, EUR 180,000 Do in cash, drugs, gold and silver were seized. —Europol, 20141 143 Copyright ©2018 by SAGE Publications, Inc. This work may not be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means without express written permission of the publisher. 144 Cyberspace, Cybersecurity, and Cybercrime THINK ABOUT IT 8.1 Surface Web and Deep Web Google, Facebook, and any website you can What Would You Do? find via traditional search engines (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, etc.) are all located 1. The deep web offers users an anonym- on the surface web. It is likely that when you ity that the surface web cannot provide. use the Internet for research and/or social What would you do if you knew that purposes you are using the surface web. -
Wikileaks and the Institutional Framework for National Security Disclosures
THE YALE LAW JOURNAL PATRICIA L. BELLIA WikiLeaks and the Institutional Framework for National Security Disclosures ABSTRACT. WikiLeaks' successive disclosures of classified U.S. documents throughout 2010 and 2011 invite comparison to publishers' decisions forty years ago to release portions of the Pentagon Papers, the classified analytic history of U.S. policy in Vietnam. The analogy is a powerful weapon for WikiLeaks' defenders. The Supreme Court's decision in the Pentagon Papers case signaled that the task of weighing whether to publicly disclose leaked national security information would fall to publishers, not the executive or the courts, at least in the absence of an exceedingly grave threat of harm. The lessons of the PentagonPapers case for WikiLeaks, however, are more complicated than they may first appear. The Court's per curiam opinion masks areas of substantial disagreement as well as a number of shared assumptions among the Court's members. Specifically, the Pentagon Papers case reflects an institutional framework for downstream disclosure of leaked national security information, under which publishers within the reach of U.S. law would weigh the potential harms and benefits of disclosure against the backdrop of potential criminal penalties and recognized journalistic norms. The WikiLeaks disclosures show the instability of this framework by revealing new challenges for controlling the downstream disclosure of leaked information and the corresponding likelihood of "unintermediated" disclosure by an insider; the risks of non-media intermediaries attempting to curtail such disclosures, in response to government pressure or otherwise; and the pressing need to prevent and respond to leaks at the source. AUTHOR. -
The Economic Functioning of Online Drugs Markets
ISSN 2042-2695 CEP Discussion Paper No 1490 Revised August 2017 (Replaced July 2017 version) The Economic Functioning of Online Drugs Markets V. Bhaskar Robin Linacre Stephen Machin Abstract The economic functioning of online drug markets using data scraped from online platforms is studied. Analysis of over 1.5 million online drugs sales shows online drugs markets tend to function without the significant moral hazard problems that, a priori, one might think would plague them. Only a small proportion of online drugs deals receive bad ratings from buyers, and online markets suffer less from problems of adulteration and low quality that are a common feature of street sales of illegal drugs. Furthermore, as with legal online markets, the market penalizes bad ratings, which subsequently lead to significant sales reductions and to market exit. The impact of the well-known seizure by law enforcement of the original Silk Road and the shutdown of Silk Road 2.0 are also studied, together with the exit scam of the market leader at the time, Evolution. There is no evidence that these exits deterred buyers or sellers from online drugs trading, as new platforms rapidly replaced those taken down, with the online market for drugs continuing to grow. Keywords: dark web, drugs JEL codes:K42 This paper was produced as part of the Centre’s Communities Programme. The Centre for Economic Performance is financed by the Economic and Social Research Council. Acknowledgements Robin Linacre contributed to this paper in a personal capacity and in his own time. The research is not linked to any of his work for either the Sentencing Council or the Ministry of Justice. -
A Framework for Identifying Host-Based Artifacts in Dark Web Investigations
Dakota State University Beadle Scholar Masters Theses & Doctoral Dissertations Fall 11-2020 A Framework for Identifying Host-based Artifacts in Dark Web Investigations Arica Kulm Dakota State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.dsu.edu/theses Part of the Databases and Information Systems Commons, Information Security Commons, and the Systems Architecture Commons Recommended Citation Kulm, Arica, "A Framework for Identifying Host-based Artifacts in Dark Web Investigations" (2020). Masters Theses & Doctoral Dissertations. 357. https://scholar.dsu.edu/theses/357 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by Beadle Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses & Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Beadle Scholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A FRAMEWORK FOR IDENTIFYING HOST-BASED ARTIFACTS IN DARK WEB INVESTIGATIONS A dissertation submitted to Dakota State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Cyber Defense November 2020 By Arica Kulm Dissertation Committee: Dr. Ashley Podhradsky Dr. Kevin Streff Dr. Omar El-Gayar Cynthia Hetherington Trevor Jones ii DISSERTATION APPROVAL FORM This dissertation is approved as a credible and independent investigation by a candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy in Cyber Defense degree and is acceptable for meeting the dissertation requirements for this degree. Acceptance of this dissertation does not imply that the conclusions reached by the candidate are necessarily the conclusions of the major department or university. Student Name: Arica Kulm Dissertation Title: A Framework for Identifying Host-based Artifacts in Dark Web Investigations Dissertation Chair: Date: 11/12/20 Committee member: Date: 11/12/2020 Committee member: Date: Committee member: Date: Committee member: Date: iii ACKNOWLEDGMENT First, I would like to thank Dr. -
The Potential Harms of the Tor Anonymity Network Cluster Disproportionately in Free Countries
The potential harms of the Tor anonymity network cluster disproportionately in free countries Eric Jardinea,1,2, Andrew M. Lindnerb,1, and Gareth Owensonc,1 aDepartment of Political Science, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061; bDepartment of Sociology, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866; and cCyber Espion Ltd, Portsmouth PO2 0TP, United Kingdom Edited by Douglas S. Massey, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, and approved October 23, 2020 (received for review June 10, 2020) The Tor anonymity network allows users to protect their privacy However, substantial evidence has shown that the preponder- and circumvent censorship restrictions but also shields those ance of Onion/Hidden Services traffic connects to illicit sites (7). distributing child abuse content, selling or buying illicit drugs, or With this important caveat in mind, our data also show that the sharing malware online. Using data collected from Tor entry distribution of potentially harmful and beneficial uses is uneven, nodes, we provide an estimation of the proportion of Tor network clustering predominantly in politically free regimes. In particular, users that likely employ the network in putatively good or bad the average rate of likely malicious use of Tor in our data for ways. Overall, on an average country/day, ∼6.7% of Tor network countries coded by Freedom House as “not free” is just 4.8%. In users connect to Onion/Hidden Services that are disproportion- countries coded as “free,” the percentage of users visiting Onion/ ately used for illicit purposes. We also show that the likely balance Hidden Services as a proportion of total daily Tor use is nearly of beneficial and malicious use of Tor is unevenly spread globally twice as much or ∼7.8%. -
Monitoring the Dark Web and Securing Onion Services
City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Publications and Research Queensborough Community College 2017 Monitoring the Dark Web and Securing Onion Services John Schriner CUNY Queensborough Community College How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/qb_pubs/41 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] Monitoring the Dark Web Schriner 1 John Schriner Monitoring the Dark Web Contrary to what one may expect to read with a title like Monitoring the Dark Web, this paper will focus less on how law enforcement works to monitor hidden web sites and services and focus more on how academics and researchers monitor this realm. The paper is divided into three parts: Part One discusses Tor research and how onion services work; Part Two discusses tools that researchers use to monitor the dark web; Part Three tackles the technological, ethical, and social interests at play in securing the dark web. Part One: Tor is Research-Driven Tor (an acronym for 'the onion router' now stylized simply 'Tor') is an anonymity network in which a user of the Tor Browser connects to a website via three hops: a guard node, a middle relay, and an exit node. The connection is encrypted with three layers, stripping a layer at each hop towards its destination server. No single node has the full picture of the connection along the circuit: the guard knows only your IP but not where the destination is; the middle node knows the guard and the exit node; the exit node knows only the middle node and the final destination. -
The Tor Dark Net
PAPER SERIES: NO. 20 — SEPTEMBER 2015 The Tor Dark Net Gareth Owen and Nick Savage THE TOR DARK NET Gareth Owen and Nick Savage Copyright © 2015 by Gareth Owen and Nick Savage Published by the Centre for International Governance Innovation and the Royal Institute of International Affairs. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Centre for International Governance Innovation or its Board of Directors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution — Non-commercial — No Derivatives License. To view this license, visit (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc- nd/3.0/). For re-use or distribution, please include this copyright notice. 67 Erb Street West 10 St James’s Square Waterloo, Ontario N2L 6C2 London, England SW1Y 4LE Canada United Kingdom tel +1 519 885 2444 fax +1 519 885 5450 tel +44 (0)20 7957 5700 fax +44 (0)20 7957 5710 www.cigionline.org www.chathamhouse.org TABLE OF CONTENTS vi About the Global Commission on Internet Governance vi About the Authors 1 Executive Summary 1 Introduction 2 Hidden Services 2 Related Work 3 Study of HSes 4 Content and Popularity Analysis 7 Deanonymization of Tor Users and HSes 8 Blocking of Tor 8 HS Blocking 9 Conclusion 9 Works Cited 12 About CIGI 12 About Chatham House 12 CIGI Masthead GLOBAL COMMISSION ON INTERNET GOVERNANCE PAPER SERIES: NO. 20 — SEPTEMBER 2015 ABOUT THE GLOBAL ABOUT THE AUTHORS COMMISSION ON INTERNET Gareth Owen is a senior lecturer in the School of GOVERNANCE Computing at the University of Portsmouth. -
A Broad Evaluation of the Tor English Content Ecosystem
A Broad Evaluation of the Tor English Content Ecosystem Mahdieh Zabihimayvan Reza Sadeghi Department of Computer Science and Engineering Department of Computer Science and Engineering Kno.e.sis Research Center, Wright State University Kno.e.sis Research Center, Wright State University Dayton, OH, USA Dayton, OH, USA [email protected] [email protected] Derek Doran Mehdi Allahyari Department of Computer Science and Engineering Department of Computer Science Kno.e.sis Research Center, Wright State University Georgia Southern University Dayton, OH, USA Statesboro, GA, USA [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT It is an open question whether the fundamental and oen nec- Tor is among most well-known dark net in the world. It has noble essary protections that Tor provides its users is worth its cost: the uses, including as a platform for free speech and information dis- same features that protect the privacy of virtuous users also make semination under the guise of true anonymity, but may be culturally Tor an eective means to carry out illegal activities and to evade law beer known as a conduit for criminal activity and as a platform enforcement. Various positions on this question have been docu- to market illicit goods and data. Past studies on the content of mented [16, 22, 30], but empirical evidence is limited to studies that Tor support this notion, but were carried out by targeting popular have crawled, extracted, and analyzed specic subsets of Tor based domains likely to contain illicit content. A survey of past studies on the type of hosted information, such as drug tracking [12], may thus not yield a complete evaluation of the content and use of homemade explosives [20], terrorist activities [7], or forums [39]. -
Dark Web Monitoring
Dark Web Monitoring: What You Should Know You may see ads for identity theft services claiming that they will look for your Social Security number, credit card numbers, or other personal information for sale on the “dark web.” Do you know what these services do if they find it? In a survey commissioned by Consumer Federation of America, 36 percent of people who have seen these “dark web monitoring” ads believed that these services could remove their personal information from the dark web, and 37 percent thought they could prevent the information that’s sold on the dark web from being used. In reality, neither is true! Here is what you need to know about the dark web, how identity theft services work, and what you can do if your personal information is in danger. What is the dark web? Picture the internet as an iceberg. The part above the water is the “surface web,” where you can find webpages using search engines such as Google or Bing. The part of the iceberg under the water is the “deep web.” Search engines won’t bring you to the pages here. This is where you are when you sign into your bank account online with your username and password. It’s where the content is beyond paywalls. It’s where you communicate with other people through social media, chat services and messaging platforms. The deep web also houses large databases and many other things. It is a significantly bigger chunk of the internet than the surface web. The “dark web” is a small part of the deep web. -
Exploration of Ultimate Dark Web Anonymization, Privacy, and Security Revanth S1, Praveen Kumar Pandey2 1, 2Department of MCA, Jain University
International Journal for Research in Applied Science & Engineering Technology (IJRASET) ISSN: 2321-9653; IC Value: 45.98; SJ Impact Factor: 7.429 Volume 8 Issue IV Apr 2020- Available at www.ijraset.com Exploration of ultimate Dark Web Anonymization, Privacy, and Security Revanth S1, Praveen Kumar Pandey2 1, 2Department of MCA, Jain University Abstract: The ultimate Dark web will review the emerging research conducted to study and identify the ins and outs of the dark web. The world is facing a lot of issues day-by-day especially on the internet. Now I have a question here, do you think is working with the internet attains knowledge or it pretends to be a part of the business. Keep the business part aside, we all know that internet is a great tool for communication. Is internet is definitely giving privacy, safety and security. Does anyone have a brief idea about the dark web for all these queries we don’t have any accurate solution. Through this survey, I outlined some of the major concepts and their dependencies the primary usage of the dark web and some of the survey experiences are further documented in this paper. Keywords: Darkweb, Security, Anonymity, Privacy, Cryptocurrencies, Blockchains, Tails, Qubes, Tor network. I. INTRODUCTION The Internet is the world's strongest and widest power. Without the internet more than the world’s 85% of the tasks will get struggled because the earth is totally dependent on network chains. Internet helps in worlds most of the leading departments like Research Centres, Hospitals, Corporate Industries, Education Institutions etc., So, with this evergreen technology, we definitely need to think about our privacy and security as a most prior concern. -
Cybercrime in the Deep Web Black Hat EU, Amsterdam 2015
Cybercrime in the Deep Web Black Hat EU, Amsterdam 2015 Introduction The Deep Web is any Internet content that, for various reasons, cannot be or is not indexed by search engines like Google. This definition thus includes dynamic web pages, blocked sites (like those where you need to answer a CAPTCHA to access), unlinked sites, private sites (like those that require login credentials), non-HTML/contextual/scripted content, and limited-access networks. Limited-access networks cover sites with domain names that have been registered on Domain Name System (DNS) roots that are not managed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), like .BIT domains, sites that are running on standard DNS but have non-standard top-level domains, and finally, darknets. Darknets are sites hosted on infrastructure that requires specific software like Tor before it can be accessed. Much of the public interest in the Deep Web lies in the activities that happen inside darknets. What are the Uses of the Deep Web? A smart person buying recreational drugs online will not want to type keywords in a regular browser. He/she will need to go online anonymously, using an infrastructure that will never lead interested parties to his IP address or physical location. Drug sellers as well, will not want to set up shop in online locations where law enforcement can easily determine, for instance, who registered that domain or where the site’s IP address exists in the real world. There are many other reasons apart from buying drugs why people would want to remain anonymous, or to set up sites that could not be traced back to a physical location or entity. -
NSIGHT SERIES May 2020 — Issue 5
NSIGHT SERIES May 2020 — Issue 5 The Decline of the Dark Web How Mobile Solutions have Disrupted the Dark Web The dark web is in decline. Once the preferred means for anonymizing users’ online activity, the dark web has now been supplanted by encrypted mobile applications and alternate solutions. Similarly, aggressive law enforcement actions have shuttered many of the dark web’s largest forums, making it a much more fleeting and much less secure destination for criminal activity. As a result, the number of users accessing dark web sites has dropped. Instead, many users are connecting through the dark web via mobile applications on Android and iOS, rather than to the dark web via standard browsers, to obfuscate their internet traffic. Indeed, the number of users accessing the Tor network has increased, even as the number of users accessing hidden Dark web platforms such as The Onion Router (Tor), I2P, service sites—the “dark” part of the dark web—has dropped. Freenet, and Zeronet, attempt to anonymize users’ digital Moreover, encrypted applications like Telegram, Signal, fingerprint so that technical attributes like IP addresses are and Wickr.me have lowered the barrier to entry for secure not easily available to entities with intent to track users’ communication and illicit transactions. As a result, just like online activity. This emphasis on anonymity was designed to many other industries, the dark web has been disrupted keep the dark web free from oversight, free from censorship, by technological innovation and aggressive competition, and open to anyone in any location. The developers of Tor, triggering a gradual decline and turning the so-called the most popular dark web platform, promote it as a tool invisible internet even more opaque.