Read: Deep Web: The scary immoral Internet. Of the millions of people who "surf" every day from their computer or "smart" device, many may not have realized that, in addition to the "visible" Internet, there is a parallel online "universe" of services and websites that do not there is a chance that they will fall on them by chance.
Inaccessible to conventional browsers, this "universe" has been "christened" Dark Internet (Darknet). A name that owes to the fact that it remains hidden from the machines search that "scan" the web, as well as by law enforcement or other government agencies around the world.
Read: Deep Web The side of the internet you do not see!
The logic of Darknet is to provide anonymity to those who use it - something that, as in the real world, is an opportunity that criminals would not miss. Among the illegal activities that have found a "roof" in it, at the top of the list is the trafficking of any kind of illegal product or material. Thus, the Dark Internet is heavily recruited for buying and selling child pornography, drugs, weapons, stolen credit cards and fake IDs.
In most cases, illegal transactions take place from online "black markets", ie sites where "sellers" post their ads and accept orders. Just like legal works e-commerce, τα προϊόντα αποστέλλονται ταχυδρομικά, στη διεύθυνση που θα επιλέξει ο αγοραστής. Με τη διαφορά ότι οι αγοραπωλησίες γίνονται ως επί το πλείστον σε bitcoin, το εικονικό νόμισμα στο οποίο δεν εμπλέκεται κάποια κεντρική τράπεζα, με συνέπεια να είναι πιο δύσκολο να ανιχνευθούν οι συναλλαγές.
Darknet is a network of servers that rely on encryption technologies to exchange data. The most common technology for this purpose is Tor (The onion router), originally developed by the US Navy Research Laboratory, to protect military communications. Thanks to Tor, a site can hide its digital tracks, "camouflaging" the server hosting it. At the same time, technology ensures that access to the Dark Internet has only users who have installed the corresponding software on their machine. Software that also guarantees their anonymity.
Until recently, even if one had installed the software, he should also know the specific address of each website he wants to visit. However, a few weeks ago, Darknet acquired its own "specter," the Grams, a search engine that gathered results from eight online "black markets" and their ads. Of course, Grams' motivator is the profit, as he said in the American magazine Wired, he will soon begin to charge those who want their ads to appear higher in the results.
After all, profit is also the main reason why most of these websites appeared after last October, and despite the arrest by the FBI at the time of the man who is alleged to be the "mastermind" behind Silk Road, - "one of the most sophisticated online "black markets"" as it has been characterized. And this is because, based on the case file, the income of Silk Road in less than 3 years of operation reached 80 million dollars, from the commission it charged for each purchase and sale. In fact, the transactions made during the site's operation seem to have exceeded 1,2 billion dollars.
However, according to law enforcement authorities around the world, the Dark Internet makes online crime more difficult to deal with, but not impossible. Thus, while the accused as the manager of Silk Road is waiting to be tried, facing a prison sentence of at least 30 years, in February another online "black market" was dismantled, Utopia, with the arrest of five suspects by the Dutch and German police.
It is standard practice for the authorities not to reveal what kind of electronic "countermeasures" they are deploying – in the case of Silk Road, thefaceThe FBI merely referred to "human error" that led to his handler's trail. On the other hand, the authorities take advantage of the fact that crimes in the online world also leave traces in the real world: to dismantle Utopia, according to the press release of the Dutch police, police officers posed as "customers", buying drugs and weapons. "The company is sending a clear message that no one can slip away because they use Tor," the statement says.
The bright side
Darknet may come to the news usually on the occasion of police operations targeting "black markets" like Silk Road, but that does not mean it's just online as the real underworld. "The Dark Internet also has an extremely important" bright "side, ensuring freedom of expression for people living in totalitarian regimes and helping to bring to light sharply documented documents, without the fear of those who have leaked them that they will be prosecuted," says Brad Chacos from PC World magazine.
Indicatively, Darknet has occasionally hosted copies of GlobalLeaks and Wikileaks, while New Yorker has created Strongbox, a service on the Dark Internet that guarantees anonymity to those who want to communicate with its authors more secure than the ones offered by emails. In addition, the Reporters Without Borders organization advises its members to use it to contact their sources if they want to ensure that the identity of those who communicate is kept secret.
At the same time, Tor-based tools and services are being "refugeed" by ordinary users who want to bypass Internet censorship "filters" in their country and, of course, political activists. So, according to The Tor website Project, the Darknet was flooded with blogs during the "Arab Spring", from people who participated in the uprisings and wanted to take their testimony abroad. Possibilities that, as the editor of PC World notes, could not become a reality if the Dark Internet did not offer a level of security that unfortunately also makes it attractive to criminals.
Source: kathimerini.gr
