The Dark Web: the name conjures up visions of nefarious characters doing despicable things under the cover of specialized technology that keeps them a step ahead of the law, who are hopelessly outnumbered. Many people believe the Dark Web is like dark matter: mysterious, undetectable, and vaster by far than our customary world.
Like many myths, this image contains a grain of truth, but like most myths it is exaggerated and far from accurate. Let’s separate fact from fiction. We’ll look at the technical features of the Dark Web, the kinds of things that happen there, its undeserved reputation for inaccessibility by the law, and its actual size.
First, the technical features. Primarily, these sites use a file called “robots.txt” file, which resides in the main directory of a web site. With the proper entries, the “robots.txt” file prevents access by standard search engines, so you cannot find a Dark Web site by using Google, Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckgo, etc. However, it’s up to the search engine to choose whether it will abide by the instructions in the robots.txt file, so other, less well-known engines can find Dark Web sites. Another feature, though not an inherent aspect of a dark web site, is that their users often access them the Tor network. The name “Tor” stands for “the onion router”, and it’s a set of routers that obscure, through various means, the IP address of a computer. It is true that Bitcoin which is an electronic form of Internet currency difficult to trace, is the currency of choice for many Dark Web sites.
The obscurity of the Dark Web attracts a lot of criminal activity. There are Dark Web sites that offer contract killing services, sell drugs, raise funds for terrorists, sell chemical and biological weapons, and a deeply disturbing array of sexual and pornographic services, many involving children. So, its sordid nature is well-deserved, but these horrible activities – and more – are readily available on the open, “non-dark” web as well. Perhaps the most well-known Dark Web site is Silk Road, a site where users could purchase any type of illicit drug, not to mention numerous other illegal products and services. Thankfully, it was recently shut down, and its owner-operator was arrested, tried, convicted, given a life sentence.
This arrest, along with others less infamous, demonstrate that the Dark Web is quite visible to legal authorities. Moreover, MIT researchers have recently shown that they can identify, with 85% accuracy, the IP address of a computer using the Tor network. So, say goodbye to that myth: the Dark Web is merely dark, not invisible.
Many people believe there are more Dark Web sites than “regular” sites. While the number of Dark Web sites is open to question, the notion that it is larger than the open Web is extremely questionable. First, there are approximately a billion legitimate sites in the world right now, while the dark web count, in the highest estimates, is about 400,000 [1]. Also, Internet Watch, a volunteer group that works with law enforcement to monitor the web for child pornography, reports that of roughly 31,000 URLs containing child pornography, only about 50 were on the dark web [2]. As for efficacy, the Washington Post reported recently on two dark web sites dedicated to raising funds for terrorists. One had raised about $1,200 [3]; the other had raised nothing [4].
So, the dark web is a nasty place, to be sure. Don’t go there, don’t even try. You will likely encounter something deeply disturbing, and may well wind up on an FBI watch list. But it’s much smaller, much less technically sophisticated, and much more transparent to law enforcement than the myths would have you believe. Just stay away from it, and let the police walk the “Dark Web” beat.
[1] http://www.batblue.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/BatBlue-Darknet.pdf
(Warning: the Bat-Blue PDF contains some very disturbing images; it is included here as a citation only).
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