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A Beginner's Guide to Exploring the Darknet
Updated on April 18, 2015
A beginner's guide to the Darknet.
A beginner's guide to the Darknet.
For years I have been aware that a hidden Internet exists underneath the
'surface web', hidden from the view of ordinary web users. It always aroused my
curiosity, but I never really followed up on that curiosity to see whether I
could access this hidden Internet.
The Darknet is intimidating. I assumed it was full of criminals and would have
little to offer a law-abiding citizen such as myself. I also thought it would
be difficult to access and that it would require some kind of advanced
technical skill, or perhaps a special invitation from a shadowy figure on seedy
bulletin boards. I decided to investigate these assumptions. One of the things
that really struck me was how easy it actually is to access and start exploring
the 'Darknet'—it requires no technical skills, no special invitation, and takes
just a few minutes to get started.
In this article I will share information on how to access and navigate the
Darknet, as well as my personal experiences and thoughts. But before I get to
that, I should explain exactly what the Darknet actually is.
The Deep Web and the Darknet
Most people are confused about what exactly the Darknet is. Firstly, the
Darknet is sometimes confused with the Deep Web. 'Deep Web' refers to all parts
of the Internet which cannot be indexed by search engines, and so can't be
found through Google, Bing, Yahoo, and so forth. Experts believe that this Deep
Web is hundreds of times larger than the 'surface Web' (i.e., the internet you
can easily get to from Google).
This sounds ominous, but in fact the Deep Web includes large databases,
libraries and members-only websites that are not available to the general
public. Most of the Deep Web is composed of academic resources maintained by
universities and contains nothing sinister whatsoever. If you've ever used the
computer catalog at a public library, you've scratched the surface of the Deep
Web. Alternative search engines are available which are able to access parts of
the Deep Web, though, being unindexed, it cannot be comprehensively searched in
its entirety, and many Deep Web index projects fail and disappear. Some Deep
Web search engines include: Ahmia.fi, Deep Web Technologies, TorSearch and
Freenet.
The 'Dark Web' or 'Darknet' is part of the Deep Web, because its contents are
not accessible through search engines. But it's something more: it is the
anonymous Internet. Within the Darknet both Web surfers and website publishers
are entirely anonymous. Whilst large government agencies are theoretically able
to track some people within this anonymous space, it is very difficult,
requires a huge amount of resources and isn't always successful.
Onion Networks and Anonymity
Onion networks keep you anonymous online.
Onion networks keep you anonymous online.
Darknet anonymity is usually achieved using an 'onion network'. Normally, when
accessing the pedestrian Internet, your computer directly accesses the server
hosting the website you are visiting. In an onion network, this direct link is
broken, and the data is instead bounced around a number of intermediaries
before reaching its destination. The communication registers on the network,
but the transport medium is prevented from knowing who is doing the
communication. Tor makes a popular onion router that is fairly user-friendly
and accessible to most operating systems.
Who Uses the Darknet?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the 'onion network' architecture of the Darknet was
originally developed by the military—the US Navy to be precise. Military,
government and law enforcement organisations are still amongst the main users
of the 'hidden Internet'. This is because ordinary internet traffic can reveal
your location, and even if the content of your communications is
well-encrypted, people can still easily see who is talking to whom and
potentially where they are located. For soldiers and agents in the field,
politicians conducting secret negotiations and in many other circumstances,
this presents an unacceptable security risk.
The Darknet is also popular amongst journalists and bloggers, especially those
living in countries where censorship and political imprisonment are
commonplace. Online anonymity allows these people, as well as whistleblowers
and information-leakers, to communicate with sources and publish information
freely without fearing retribution. The same anonymity can also be used by news
readers to access information on the surface Web which is normally blocked by
national firewalls, such as the 'great firewall of China' which restricts which
websites Chinese Internet users are able to visit.
Activists and revolutionaries also use the Darknet so that they can organise
themselves without fear of giving away their position to the governments they
oppose. Of course, this means that terrorists also use it for the same reasons,
and so do the Darknet's most publicized users—criminals.
Accessing the Darknet
As I said in the introduction, accessing the hidden Internet is surprisingly
easy. The most popular way to do it is using a service called Tor (or TOR),
which stands for 'The Onion Router'. Although technically-savvy users can find
a multitude of different ways to configure and use Tor, it can also be as
simple as installing a new browser. Two clicks from the Tor website and you are
done, and ready to access the Darknet. The browser itself is built on top of
the Firefox browser's open-source code, so anybody who has ever used Firefox
will find the Tor browser familiar and easy to use.
The Tor browser can be used to surf the surface Web anonymously, giving the
user added protection against everything from hackers to government spying to
corporate data collection. It also lets you visit websites published
anonymously on the Tor network, which are inaccessible to people not using Tor.
This is one of the largest and most popular sections of the Darknet.
Tor website addresses don't look like ordinary URLs. They are composed of a
random-looking strings of characters followed by .onion. Here is an example of
a hidden website address: http://dppmfxaacucguzpc.onion/. That link will take
you to a directory of Darknet websites if you have Tor installed, but if you
don't then it is completely inaccessible to you. Using Tor, you can find
directories, wikis and free-for-all link dumps which will help you to find
anything you are looking for on the Darknet.
Tor is the most popular onion network, but it is not the only one. Another
example is The Freenet Project, which offers similar functionality but also
allows for the creation of private networks, which means that resources located
on a given machine can only be accessed by people who have been manually placed
on a 'friends list'.
Another Darknet system (or 'privacy network') called I2P (the Invisible
Internet Project) is growing in popularity. Although Tor still has many users,
there seems to be a shift towards I2P, which offers a range of improvements
such as integrated secure email, file storage and file sharing plug-ins, and
integrated social features such as blogging and chat.
Using a VPN for Added Protection
Many Tor users also like to add an extra layer of protection by connecting to
Tor using a virtual private network, or VPN. Although nobody can see what you
are doing online when you use an onion router, surveillance entities can see
that you are using Tor to do something. In 2014, Wired UK reported widespread
substantiated speculation that the NSA was tagging Tor users as extremists or
persons of interest ("Use privacy services? The NSA is probably tracking you").
Although that is likely a very long tag list and there is no concrete evidence
about what is done with it, it is understandably something people want to
avoid. Using a VPN to connect to Tor means that nobody will be able to see that
you are using it, and is therefore seen as a good solution to this problem.
Here is an interesting read if you want to learn more about VPN's and using
these two systems together: Combining TOR with a VPN.
My Meanderings on the Darknet
I should make it clear from the very start that I am a beginner. A n00b, if you
like, far from being a seasoned veteran. Having said that, here is my
beginner's perspective on what I've found.
Diversity and Strange Contradictions
One of the things which immediately struck me about the Darknet was the unusual
juxtaposition of different users on the websites I found. In some ways, the
dark Web is a very idealistic place. You will find a lot of political writing,
particularly of the libertarian, anarchist and conspiracy-theory varieties, but
also more mainstream liberal and conservative.
I found it very strange that one of the main themes of the writing I saw was
'freedom of information'. The idea that information should be free and
available to all seems to be very dear to the netizens of the dark Web, as does
the idea that governments and big business are threatening this. I found this
very strange coming from a group of people for whom hiding and encrypting their
own information seems to be such a major obsession. I also found it common for
websites to have one section preaching high ideals and filled with moralistic
exhortations, and then another filled with links to criminal enterprises. The
publishers of these websites seemed either unaware of or unwilling to confront
these strange contradictions.
The fact that so many of the dark Web's users are enemies also leads to a
strange dynamic. Governments and terrorists, law enforcement and criminals are
amongst the biggest users of Darknet communications. I was tickled to see
website security experts and criminal hackers sharing the same forums and
discussing their common interests in computer security whilst hardly
recognising that they are nemeses.
You Can Buy Anything With Bitcoin
The Darknet's large criminal marketplaces are well known. Here, you can buy
everything from drugs to assassinations. One of the first sites I came across
purported to be run by a hitman offering his services to anyone willing to pay.
Personally, I don't believe it. This site was probably either a police sting or
a conman who will just take your money and run (there are many, many times more
scammers pretending to sell illegal items than there are people genuinely
selling illegal stuff in places like this).
The famous criminal marketplace Silk Road was recently taken down by a major
police operation which made it into the international press. Last night it took
me five minutes to find links to Silk Road 2.0, as well as other similar
marketplaces. The most commonly traded illegal items appeared to be hacked
PayPal accounts, drugs, fake passports and other IDs.
All of these businesses accept only bitcoins, because they can be used to
conduct entirely anonymous transactions.
It Looks Like The 1990s in There!
There are very few professional-looking websites in the Darknet (other than
those run by a criminal enterprises, of course). Most sites are created by
amateurs, and many are 'self hosted' by people running the site on their own
computer. Also, some web technologies do not work when you are using Tor.
Flash, which, among other things, is used to play videos on YouTube is a
glaring example. Also, accessing websites using Tor takes longer than on other
browsers, and accessing sites hosted on Tor is even slower.
All of this means that using the Darknet is very much like time-traveling back
to the Internet of the 1990s. The sites you visit have basic designs, no
advanced modern features and are slow to load. When they load at all, that is.
Many sites just fail to load, possibly because they are hosted by some kid in
his bedroom who has turned the computer off, or it could be because they have
additional security to only allow certain people in. In any case it's all very
retro.
Cryptocurrency and the Future of the Darknet
The future of the anonymous Internet lies in cryptocurrency markets.
The future of the anonymous Internet lies in cryptocurrency markets.
Just as the Darknet played a big role in the early development of the
increasingly popular digital currency Bitcoin, it seems that 'cryptocurrencies'
will play a major role in the future development of the Darknet.
There are now several projects seeking to use the power of digital currencies
to build new 'privacy networks' (which I think is actually the proper name for
things like TOR) as well as other privacy-centric and censorship-resistant web
services. Cryptocurrency and privacy networks actually share a lot in common
already - they are both so-called 'distributed computing' projects, which
require a network of computers owned by private individuals to operate, rather
than a single, powerful web server owned by a company. In the case of privacy
networks these computers are called nodes, and are usually maintained by
volunteers,
One of the big problems with these privacy networks - the reason why they are
so slow and unreliable, is because there are much greater incentives to use the
network's resources than to provide resources to the network. Finding enough
volunteers is difficult, and if they were run in a centralized way by a single
company they would not be able to provide the same privacy and anti-censorship
effects.
One solution to this is to 'monetize' people's involvement with providing
darknet services by integrating them with a digital currency. These digital
currencies like Bitcoin operate using a distributed accounting ledger, and
people are rewarded for helping to maintain this system using newly created
coins. Combining the two would allow the new coins to go to people whose
computer is not only providing accounting services for the currency, but also
privacy services to the Darknet system.
Namecoin
The first attempt at this was a project called 'Namecoin'. Namecoin is a
digital currency a little bit like Bitcoin, which you can use to buy and sell
things or to transfer money to people anywhere in the world with minimal fees.
It can also be used to create website addresses ending in .bit. These websites
cannot be censored the way a government or Internet service provider can censor
a regular website by blocking access to it, because the location is not a
static address on a single computer, but instead is distributed across the
network. Namecoin also has the potential to be used for personal identity
management, which could lead to email and other communication apps. The easiest
way to start visiting .bit websites is by installing the Free Speech Me browser
plug-in.
Safecoin
Another interesting project, which is still in its testing phase but has
already generated a lot of interest (and investment) is the SAFE Network and
Safecoin. The SAFE Network is a fledgling privacy network integrated with cloud
services and its own cryptocurrency, Safecoin. SAFE stands for 'Secure Access
for Everyone'.
Safecoin 'farmers' would run a network node on their computer, and would be
rewarded for all of the resources they provide to the network, including disk
space, processor power, bandwidth and so on. In addition to building up a
privacy network, other users would then be able to use Safecoins to use these
resources for anything from cloud-storing files to hosting websites and apps.
The SAFE Network is being developed by a company called MaidSafe, who have
already sold off their ownership of the network to early adopters through a
'pre-sale' of Safecoins.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/_91AYoH5dTA?wmode=transparent&start=
A Final Word of Advice
Anyone can access this hidden Internet very easily, but if you decide to go
exploring please be very careful. There is a lot of unsavoury content as well
as a large number of criminals. Don't just click links without thinking about
where you might end up, what you might see or who you might meet.
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Have You Ever Visited the Darknet?
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