Security researchers from Kaspersky who monitor the activities of cybercriminals on the Darknet, and particularly the Tor network, have discovered that the number of activities taking place over the anonymous network is increasing.
According to Kaspersky Lab researcher, Sergey Lozhkin, there are currently about 900 Tor hidden services with 5,500 nodes and 1,000 exit nodes.
Cybercriminals are attracted to the Tor network for a variety of reasons. It allows them to create anonymous underground forums and markets, and they can use it to build malware (C&C) infrastructure that is difficult to disrupt.
Examples of malware that use the Tor network to communicate with C&C are ZeuS, Chewbacca, and even more recently Backdoor.AndroidOS.Torec.a (ένα Android Trojan).
Using Tor for malware has advantages as well as drawbacks. The fact that Tor-based malware is larger in size and more difficult to grow makes it more rare, but not that it does not exist. Lozhkin believes that their number will soon increase.
