THE DARK WEB FOR THE RATIONAL linkcabin The Dark Web For The Rational I dedicate this book to the late Heather Heyer, Barnaby Jack, Aaron Swartz and Jo Cox. 1 The Dark Web For The Rational ABOUT THE AUTHOR My first name is Jack. I am a security researcher who is interested in many subjects not only limited to IT security. I aim to make positive changes in the world for the vast amount of people and not a small pocket of people. This book was written while I was in university and also after I graduated. Website: https://itsjack.cc Twitter: https://twitter.com/linkcabin ABOUT THE COVER The cover was made by selecting all of the client side code from a popular ‘dark market’ forum and appending it into the image of the ‘Silk Road’ camel commonly associated with the famous ‘Silk Road dark market’ which was run by Ross Ulbricht. The code is appended by using a hex editor, which is then later viewed by an early version of MS paint which renders the appended client side code into a distorted form. This was then copied and stretched to produce the background of the cover, essentially providing a visual representation of the HTML/CSS/JS code from the ‘dark market’. The ‘Silk Road’ camel was then put on top of the distorted background. 2 The Dark Web For The Rational Contents The Birth ...................................................................................................................................................................... 7 MEDIA ............................................................................................................................................................................ 14 DARKNESS LIES EVERYWHERE ................................................................................................................................. 20 PRIVATE COMMUNITIES ........................................................................................................................................... 26 ON TERRORISM .......................................................................................................................................................... 36 THE IMPOSSIBLE PRODUCT ..................................................................................................................................... 44 IS FULL ANONYMITY REAL? ..................................................................................................................................... 49 THE DARK MARKET LOOP ....................................................................................................................................... 57 THE GREAT MIGRATION .......................................................................................................................................... 67 ACK ................................................................................................................................................................................. 72 3 The Dark Web For The Rational PREFACE The ‘dark web’ is a common phrase that’s used to describe parts of the internet that supposedly is mysterious, full of terrors, that are too dark to describe to the many. The most common stories on the ‘dark web’ are usually drugs, hacking, paedophilia, red rooms, hitmen and guns. For journalists, the dark corner of the internet is a fantastic opportunity for internet hits and for an interesting story to write up, but, it is not completely true. Many parts of this mysterious place are a misconception developed by many to sell products and also to sell stories, in reality, it’s sadly less sexy than most would think. The loose definition of ‘dark web’ or ‘deep web’ is a website that is not indexable by search engines, such as Google or Bing, most sites disallow access to some pages to be indexed, but very few allow no content to be indexed. Throughout this book I choose to put ‘dark web’ under quotations, I believe it is an incorrect term given to describe the network and therefore decide it needs to be highlighted as incorrect. I also wish to highlight through this book that I use ‘TOR’ as the way to display The Onion Router project, although many from the project use Tor, there is no real difference, I am simply more comfortable with TOR as I think it’s correct. It’s little, but I’m sure someone will take note of it, in conclusion the official way to write it, is Tor. The main reason for me describing this as a loose description is that it is also impossible for search engines like Google or Bing to correctly index some pages that are deemed in the ‘dark web’, as you require other technologies to access such a page, technologies like TOR. Many web resources on the ‘dark web’ are depict the ‘dark web’ as a hard to reach place that only a few know how to reach, making it an attractive story and something that many people will seem interested in knowing. It is in actual fact very easy to access some ‘dark web’ sites through software known as TOR, or more precisely, the TOR browser. TOR stands for The Onion Router, a project which was initially released in 2002. It is freely available to download and builds on top of the Firefox browser to allow you to access ‘onion’ sites. In 2015 on August, the term ‘dark web’ reached its peak in interest on Google, this looks to be mainly because of the release of the film ‘Deep Web’ which aims to tell of the story of Ross Ulbricht, the alleged owner of infamous drug site Silk Road. This story alone has produced a vast amount of interest towards the ‘dark web’, what it is and why people use it. I think the ‘dark web’ is misunderstood, it isn’t dark, and it isn’t even a web. It’s arguably a group of projects which initially attracted various users, who can be indeed paedophiles and drug salesman, but can also be spies and journalists. The ‘dark web’ can help in alleviating censorship in totalitarian regimes to every day citizens, it can also help paedophiles escape justice. There are many different variants to what the media broadly calls the ‘deep’ or ‘dark’ web. A better term could be ‘anon-web’, the aim for users of a network to be anonymous and untraceable, allowing freedom of speech to thrive. But as I discuss in later chapters, complete anonymity is something relatively questionable, so would be a 4 The Dark Web For The Rational slightly inaccurate term. This area of work is more political than technological, many projects around this area of work exist, but are depicted as ‘dark’ or ‘deep’ to produce the idea of being undesirable or unreachable. The argument that is currently in question is how far we can allow freedom of speech in technology, libertarians wish for anyone to be able to view any information they wish without intervention from other third parties. This is of course a fundamental belief in libertarianism and has been previously crushed with the internet, where censorship and manipulation is quite prevalent in various areas of the world. Many like the idea of freedom of speech when it is seen positively, removing censorship barriers from dictatorships, allowing communication through revolutions and allowing journalists to do their job safely and securely. The trouble that many have, is sadly, freedom of speech doesn’t just have positive points, there has to be an appetite of how much freedom you give people to ensure there is some level of order. This argument is why so much energy is put upon this subject, do we accept the consequences of having a much freer society where people do not need to worry about their opinion being ‘incorrect’ or a society where users must be analysed, tracked and searched to ensure that sections of society are kept safe in some manner. The issue of it being technological means many generations of users don’t understand the issue, much like the internet, which is still hardly understood by many in American or UK political parties. With this hurdle in place where technical points are missed, many do not look at the core question of the subject, which is freedom of speech. Instead, we refer to such a network as ‘dark’ or ‘deep’ a mysterious, warped place, where only the worst of society go to. The ‘dark web’ can also been seen in a similar light to what happened with cryptography in 1990’s, known as the ‘Crypto Wars’, where America produced restrictions on the access of strong cryptography. This ‘war’ was very much on intelligence agencies being able to decrypt any communication or data. This ‘war’ almost re-emerged in Britain when David Cameron decided to make a speech advocating backdoors in cryptography, this later came to no avail. The main reason why nothing further was done in regards to backdoors in cryptographic products was most likely because of fears of attack vectors on businesses being widened because of backdoors. The misunderstanding of the technical points by politicians means security in general, not just cryptography, is therefore sometimes attacked. An argument again exists in the ‘crypto wars’ which is similar to the ‘deep web’ on freedom of speech, and what various parts of the world think of it. The aim of writing this book is to identify really what is what many call the ‘deep’ or ‘dark’ web, why many people are wrong with many points that are made against the mysterious network and shed light on many intricate parts of such a system. This book obviously cannot be completely conclusive, there are various projects in regards to anonymous networks which all have different solutions. I want to be able to provide an overview of an increasingly important place on the internet