The Dark Net
5 min readThe Dark Net
Today is also known as The Dark Web, a part of the World Wide Web. Before getting to the Dark Web, it is important to know that the World Wide Web consists of different layers, one of them being the Dark Web. Common uses for the dark web have been linked to criminal activities, of whom some are true and some are not. It is an interesting environment inside of the WWW, that has it’s own nature. An insight on the day-to-day activities in this environment can be unappealing, scary and suprising to a normal person.
Surface web and Deep Web
With billions of existing websites, surface web makes up to approximately ten percent of all the accessible content on the world wide web. Made up of websites that are indexed by common search engines, meaning that they can be found and accessed. (Finklea, 2017). We use this part of the web in day to day activities. Accessed through any computing device with an internet connection.
Deep web is making up the largest part of the world wide web. It consists of peoples private data, academic databases, medical & financial records, scientific & government reports (Bradbury, 2014). To access this type of content authentication is required, for example, a student needs to provide authentication, ( proof of being a student in the particular university ) to access the university library database.
Dark web
The proportion that the Dark web takes up is unclear, but it could be composed of a couple thousand to around ten thousand active websites. They are not indexed by common search engines, making them harder to be found and accessed (Wikimedia Foundation, 2021). To access content available on the dark web a different type of browser needs to be used, most commonly known of them being Tor browser. Notorious for having unappealing and explicit content, yet some things hold true about the dark web and some do not.
Myth or Fact ( Marianas Web )
There is also considered that another layer might exist. It is a mystery of how large and of what content this layer consists if it exists. Undoubtedly it would have the highest possible security, with the most sensitive existing data. If such a layer were to exist, it would have the potential to have ties with perhaps military operations, that only a narrow list of people could access (Blue, 2020).
In the Dark Web
Created by the US government as a part of the ARPANET, it started out as a military project. To this day it is being funded by the US (Chertoff, 2017). The Dark Web is a part of the internet, only accessible with special browsers. The Onion Router, Tor is the most commonly used browser to access the content on the Dark Web. The connection from the Tor browser is different than that of normal browsers, because of the data encryption while making the connection to the server (Faizan & Khan, 2019).
The content on The Dark Web consists of sites called hidden services, most notoriously know for criminally related activities (Faizan & Khan, 2019). The Dark Web sites have accumulated bitcoin as their main currency for exchanges, due to it being safe and to some level untraceable (Anon, 2020). A lot of information surrounding the Dark Web is untrue, a good example, in this case, is buying a hitman to execute a murder. A risky business in theory and a good basis for internet scams, because once a bitcoin transfer goes through it is impossible to get it back. The only true thing that holds about the hitmen is the fact that some people are interested to buy these services (Anon, 2020), (Chertoff, 2017).
About 80 % of the traffic is made up of people interested in child pornography, and sadly it is true that there are huge amounts of videos and images with children on these sites (Anon, 2020). Besides all the negativity that exists on the Dark Web, there are people who seek and provide medical advice, political dissidents who want to speak out against authoritarian regimes. Some are investigative journalists gathering information (Anon, 2020), (Sebastian, 2015).
Bibliography
Academic references:
- Bradbury, D. (2014). Unveiling the dark web. Network Security, 2014(4), 14–17.
https://doi.org/10.1016/s1353-4858(14)70042-x
- Chertoff, M . (2017). A public policy perspective of the Dark Web. Journal of Cyber Policy, 2:1, 26-38.
DOI: 10.1080/23738871.2017.1298643
- Faizan, M., & Khan, R. A. (2019). Exploring and analyzing the dark Web: A new alchemy. First Monday, 24(5).
https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v24i5.9473
- Finklea, K. (2017). Dark Web.
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R44101\
Non-Academic references :
- Anon, (Host). (2019-present). The Dark Web Unmasked. Chalkbites, Inc. https://thedarkwebunmasked.transistor.fm/about
- Blue, V. (2020). The myth of Mariana’s Web, the darkest corner of the internet. Engadget.
3. Sebastian, L. [Techquickie]. (2015). Deep Web & Dark Web as Fast As Possible. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKrODPtVinw&t=243s&ab_channel=Techquickie.
4. Wikimedia Foundation. (2021). Dark web. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_web.