We delve into the hidden parts of the internet
The internet is a modern phenomenon that has grown well beyond the imagination of those who first envisioned it many years ago. On one hand, it’s the world’s most valuable resource – an incredible learning platform where, altruistically speaking, we can learn from each other’s cultures, discover new areas of research, share ideas and knowledge and become better, more worldly people. You could look it as the gateway to the next step of human evolution.
On the other hand, and from a pessimistic point of view, where there are good human intentions there will inevitably be bad ones too. When it comes to the internet, this means the hidden parts, the parts that can found in what is known as the Dark Web.
As the sinister name perhaps suggests, the Dark Web plays host to some of the more vile and despicable aspects of humanity. This is where you’ll find the trade of recreational drugs, weapons and even hitman services, as well as hacking information, stolen credit card details and illegal pornographic images.
However, the Dark Web is also a place where individuals in totalitarian nations that block the web can access the outside world. This way, they can inform others of what’s going on inside their country.
It’s a double-edged sword, indeed, and for every honest use there are probably ten dishonest uses. But what exactly is the Dark Web?
The Deep Dark Web
Essentially, the Dark Web is an area of the internet that’s hidden from the view of the usual search engines behind layers of anonymity.
The main bulk of the Dark Web uses the Tor network to anonymise and hide its identity from the rest of the world. Tor is a set of encryption tools, services and computer nodes that will hide and change your public IP address, as well as encrypt the data to and from your computer. By using it, as an individual, you are effectively hidden from those who monitor the internet.
When you apply that model to a web server, it has the same effect, so the content on that website can only be accessed by the Tor network – or similar – and its owners are safely anonymous.
There’s a lot more to it, of course, and the various layers of how the IP address of the server is hidden is something which, from a networking engineer point of view, is really quite fascinating.
An infamous example of a Dark Web site is the Silk Road and the various evolutions of it that appear every time it’s taken down or the perpetrators are dealt with. More recently, there was the hacking of Ashley Madison, where the names of users were published to an area of the Dark Web.
Importantly, though, the Dark Web isn’t to be confused with the Deep Web or Invisible Web. On the surface, they’re similar, in that normal search engines can’t scour them, but the Deep Web is an area that houses research papers, university databases, company intranets, specialist forums and such. On the whole, it’s a harmless environment.
The Dark Web, though, is a little harder to access and, as we said, it includes stuff you really don’t want to view if you can help it. Here be dragons, as the saying goes.
To emphasise the other half of the Dark Web, though, it’s worth repeating that due to its ability to hide users and web servers, there are people out there who are using it to reveal to the world the terrible things that are going on behind the closed borders of some countries. To that end, we applaud their bravery and the fact they’re using a powerful tool to send a message.
What Is Tor?
We briefly touched on what the Tor network is, but to help clarify it better, the following is quoted from the Tor network’s overview:
“The Tor network is a group of volunteer-operated servers that allows people to improve their privacy and security on the internet. Tor’s users employ this network by connecting through a series of virtual tunnels rather than making a direct connection, thus allowing both organisations and individuals to share information over public networks without compromising their privacy. Along the same line, Tor is an effective censorship circumvention tool, allowing its users to reach otherwise blocked destinations or content. Tor can also be used as a building block for software developers to create new communication tools with built-in privacy features.”
With it, you can access other countries that are blocked from the rest of the world – to some degree – or use it to boost your security and privacy online.
As the Tor overview further explains, journalists use it to talk to whistleblowers or to discover a company’s illicit dealings. There’s even a branch of the US Navy that uses it for intelligence gathering.
Basically, without it, you won’t be able to access the Deep Web or anything relating to it. And if you try, you’ll be blocked and run the risk of having some very scary individuals dressed in black and brandishing automatic weapons swing in through your bedroom window in the dead of night. So don’t even attempt it.
Accessing The Dark Web
You’ll need Tor to access the Dark Web, that much we’ve established. More specifically, though, you’ll need to use the Tor Hidden Service Protocol.
The Hidden Service Protocol within the Tor network works by creating links to a hidden server through introduction points, which are computer nodes within the Tor cloud. This introduction then creates a public key, which can let other Tor network users see the server.
The service will then build a Hidden Service Descriptor, which contains the public key and information of each introduction to a distributed hash table.
For a user on the other end of the Tor network, hypothetically speaking, to access the hidden server, they’ll need to first know it’s friendly, human name, which ends in .onion. And when they enter it into the Tor-enabled browser, they’re taken to a Rendezvous Point node that’s linked to the introduction points and onto the actual hidden server itself.
Again, there’s a lot more going on under the surface. These steps, courtesy of the Tor network page, explain it better then we could.
In short, to get Tor you’ll need to head on over to the Tor site at goo.gl/H8mbEV and from there click on the link ‘Download Tor’ from the banner on the main page. The client should be the same as your operating system, Windows, Linux or Mac and so on, and you have a couple of options available as to which type of download you want.
For ease of use, though, you can simply select the Tor Browser for Windows (or whatever OS you use). This will be a 40-50MB file that when installed will allow you to run the Tor Browser, which connects to and uses the Tor onion network.
Step 1
When you first run the newly created Tor browser, you’ll get a settings window to help configure your connection. For the most part, if you’re at home and you don’t have any internet restrictions, you can just click on the Connect button to launch the browser. If you’re at work, though, and you have internet restrictions, then you’ll need to click the Configure button.
We can’t walk you through this process, as each network is configured differently, and as a warning, if you tamper with your work setup, there’s a good chance you could get the sack.
Step 2
After clicking on the Connect button, the Tor browser will connect to the Tor network and set up a secure link to the other nodes.
Step 3
With the tor browser now open you can securely surf the internet and, more to the point, you can start to access the Dark Web.
Step 4
If you’re interested in the security of the Tor browser, which is essentially a version of Firefox that’s been beefed up with every security precaution possible, you can view the settings by clicking on the onion icon next to the address bar.
Step 5
Now you have Tor installed and you’re up and running with it, to access the Dark Web you’ll need a starting point.
You won’t be able to Google the information, obviously, so you’ll need to consult a hidden server directory. There are several available; some are better than others and will provide you with links to .onion hidden servers that the other won’t.
Generally speaking you’re on your own after that, but to begin with you can look at the following hidden server directories focusing on a range of services. We’ve decided to leave the actual links out – for good reasons: in case younger and inexperienced readers try to view them.
General hidden search:
Hidden Wiki
TorDir
Not Evil
Torlinks
Financial:
Hidden Wallet
Shadow Wallet
Onion Wallet
EasyCoin
Commercial services
Cstore
Mobile Store
Rent-a-Hacker
Social Hack
The list goes on, and within those categories we’ve listed are areas to access stolen credit cards, rigged sporting events, hacked PayPal accounts, obtaining fake passports and citizenry documents and so on.
A Final Warning
The Dark Web is the kind of place you’ll never really need to enter, unless you’re trying to contact someone who is in another country that has some pretty extreme restrictions.
Let’s face it, 99% of the Dark Web is, to quote Obi Wan Kenobie, “A wretched hive of scum and villainy”. Even those who frequent the Dark Web avoid some of the more dreadful areas of it. There is stuff in there that will make you physically sick, so please tread carefully or even better, leave it well alone.