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Dark Net / Dark Web

rynner2

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Huge raid to shut down 400-plus dark net sites
By Jane Wakefield, Technology reporter

Silk Road 2.0 and 400 other sites believed to be selling illegal items including drugs and weapons have been shut down.
The sites operated on the Tor network - a part of the internet unreachable via traditional search engines.

The joint operation between 16 European countries and the US saw 17 arrests, including Blake Benthall who is said to be behind Silk Road 2.0.
Experts believe the shutdown represents a breakthrough for fighting cybercrime.
Six Britons were also arrested, including a 20-year-old man from Liverpool, a 19-year-old man from New Waltham, a 30 year-old-man from Cleethorpes and a man and woman, both aged 58, from Aberdovey, Wales.
All were interviewed and bailed according to the National Crime Agency.

Tor, as well as hosting legitimate sites, is home to thousands of illegal marketplaces, trading in drugs, child abuse images as well as sites for extremist groups.

Silk Road 2.0 - which launched in October last year - is one of the most notorious and deals in the buying and selling of illegal drugs.
It was resurrected after the original Silk Road site was shut down and its alleged owner arrested.

The operation also saw the seizure of Bitcoins worth approximately $1m (£632,000).
"Today we have demonstrated that, together, we are able to efficiently remove vital criminal infrastructures that are supporting serious organised crime," said Troels Oerting, head of Europol's European cybercrime centre.
"And we are not 'just' removing these services from the open internet; this time we have also hit services on the dark net using Tor where, for a long time, criminals have considered themselves beyond reach," he added.

The BBC understands that the raid represented both a technological breakthrough - with police using new techniques to track down the physical location of dark net servers - as well as seeing an unprecedented level of international co-operation among law enforcement agencies.

The so-called deep web - the anonymous part of the internet - is estimated to be anything up to 500 times the size of the surface web.
Within that experts refer to the dark net - the part of the network which Tor operates on. There are approximately three million Tor users but the number of sites may be smaller.

Prof Alan Woodward a security consultant from the University of Surrey who also advises Europol, said that the shutdown represents a new era in the fight against cybercrime.
"Tor has long been considered beyond the reach of law enforcement. This action proves that it is neither invisible nor untouchable," he said.
But, he added, it did not mean copycat sites would not spring up, or that the police had thrown light on the dark net.

etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29950946
 
So the man has cracked TOR and he went after big money drug sites instead of child porn.
 
Quite possibly the CIA/M15 and god knows what else that has the resource cracked it quite some time ago.

Doesn't mean the technology/methods are available for routine crime investigations, or even quite serious ones.
 
Most people imagine the internet is more than it is. The nearest parallel i can think of is the phone system, especially in in its mechanical Strowger-Hudd days.

Both are technically complicated and fascinating. Both are utterly indifferent as to the actual content of messages passed across them. This anyone wishing to use them for nefarious purposes will always potentially be one step ahead of those trying to detect them. Having said which, of course, most criminals are no brighter than the the rest of us and will use outdated methods that will be detected because the authorities will have already encountered them.
 
Newly published survey research indicates circa 93% of TOR users are employing the anonymity-clad network to access sites on the 'open' Web (as opposed to the sort of hidden sites typically ascribed to the notion of a 'Dark Net' / 'Dark Web').
Only a Small Fraction of The Dark Web Is Being Used For Hidden Activity, Study Finds

The dark web has a shady reputation. Hidden below the transparency and visibility of the internet's surface, the complex anonymity networks that make up the dark web host and distribute all kinds of murky content: illicit drugs, child abuse material, illegal weapons, extremist paraphernalia, and more.

But the dark web is also a misunderstood place, and the connotations its name conjures up aren't representative of the vast majority of activity that takes place within its anonymous confines, according to new research.

A new study led by cybersecurity researcher Eric Jardine from Virginia Tech suggests that only a small fraction of the dark web is being used to access hidden sites – and, in this case, the hidden activity isn't even necessarily illicit activity (although, given the dark web's shadowy corners, it could be).

In the study, Jardine and his team analysed data from the Tor network, generally considered to be the largest and most popular network enabling anonymous, private access to the uncensored web, via use of special software that connects to a system of onion routers, designed to ensure the user's anonymity.

There's nothing necessarily immoral or wrong about any of this, by the way. The deep web, as it is known, is simply the parts of the internet that aren't indexed by regular search engines (as opposed to the surface web). Part of the deep web, however, is the dark web, and parts of the dark web do host malicious content. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/only-a...is-being-used-for-hidden-activity-study-finds
 
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