The Hidden Secrets of Dark web

The billions of accessible websites on the internet today seem to be overwhelming for the common man. What’s more surprising is that these surface websites are about 7–10% of the entire internet, making up the surface web. The bulk of the internet is hidden in what’s called the deep web, or in more depth, the dark web.

The dark web is often portrayed as a platform of mysterious and illegal activities because of its anonymity. These dark web websites have a special URL which is tailed up with onion extension. (website name).onion domains are not indexed by regular search engines, and hence, you can only access the dark web with special software. The dark web constitutes a small subset of the Deep Web and is made up of a myriad of different kinds of website including drug sales, weapons, and even hit-men. Transactions on the dark web have traditionally been via the electronic currency bitcoin, which is virtually untraceable; neither the sender nor the receiver needed to know the identity of one another.

According to Barysevich, director of advanced collection at Recorded future, cyber criminals are no different.“When we ask them, ‘Do you see yourself as a criminal? Do you see yourself as a hacker?’ they tell us, ‘Don’t call us hackers. We are pen testers.’”

“We ask them, ‘Aren’t you stealing data from companies? Aren’t you stealing money from people?’ they respond, ‘Well, it’s not our fault that their systems are insecure. We’re doing them a favor.’ They will have some sort of justification for what they do.”

Dark nets allow access or penetration in different ways, based on the purpose of their use, like communication or anonymous browsing. They’re also differentiated by their level of security, depending on the encryption protocols and routing used.

Friend-to-friend is a form of peer-to-peer service — which is accessible by a specific ring of IP addresses — other IPs can be blocked by the owners to hide their presence on the network. Additionally, F2F network has enhanced security, having every exchange on the network encrypted with extra preventive layers of coding.

So it’s no secret that the dark web deals with all kinds of scams and illicit content. But what exactly do they do? Well, from credit card cloning to genius bitcoin scams, child abuse sites to assassins for-hire, and much, much more, everything is available for purchase on the dark web. Every. Passing. Second.