The Internet has evolved quite a bit since I first logged on to CompuServe in 1994. I’d spent a few years tooling around on BBS (Bulletin Board Systems) connections throughout the country at that point and the most visible portions of a forming World Wide Web were quite innocent in appearance. But as I ramped up my father’s 4600 baud modem and looked around at the fringes of online existence, I unknowingly caught a glimpse at the Web’s early underbelly. From there, pornography, craziness and illegal activities were easily accessible. There weren’t many people logging on so, naturally, there weren’t many people to police this new digital space. Eventually, as AOL, Prodigy and other ISPs became more mainstream, the more nefarious outlets vanished into the shadows. But where did it all go? I recently took a plunge into the ‘Deep Web,’ a sub-surface area of the Internet not indexed by search engines and only available to those on the forefront of technology, namely people connected to the Tor Network. This network of hidden websites is the new underbelly of the Web, the New Underground, if you will, chock full of all sorts of illicit activities. Child porn peddlers, drug dealers, hitmen and other criminal groups thrive on the Deep Web and anonymity reigns supreme. The following post outlines my findings and hopefully sheds some light on the true Wild Wild West of the World Wide Web.
What is the Deep Web?: Wikipedia has an excellent overview on the Deep Web.
The Deep Web (also called Deepnet, the invisible Web, DarkNet, Undernet or the hidden Web) refers to World Wide Web content that is not part of the Surface Web, which is indexed by standard search engines.
Mike Bergman, credited with coining the phrase,[1] has said that searching on the Internet today can be compared to dragging a net across the surface of the ocean: a great deal may be caught in the net, but there is a wealth of information that is deep and therefore missed. Most of the Web’s information is buried far down on dynamically generated sites, and standard search engines do not find it. Traditional search engines cannot “see” or retrieve content in the deep Web – those pages do not exist until they are created dynamically as the result of a specific search. The deep Web is several orders of magnitude larger than the surface Web.
So if the Internet as you know it is an iceberg, the smallest part of that iceberg, the visible portion, is where you have been surfing your entire life. You visit websites, click links, use search engines to research topics of interest and generally just make your way around the visible Web. But below that visible portion, there is a much larger compilation of destinations beyond the reach of most Internet users. This portion, the Deep Web, is much harder for the average person to access and even harder to navigate. Much of the criminal activity that happens on the Deep Web is cloaked in anonymity, shrouded in secrecy or somehow hidden from the prying eyes that would love to put an end to this virtual land of OZ. Essentially what I’m saying is this: You may be familiar with the Internet, maybe even the darker side of the Internet. You may know how to find pornography for free, download music illegally, use a torrent program to download pirated movies and other media or purchase prescription pills from some online pharmacy. But if you haven’t visited the Deep Web, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Sure, there are research papers and legitimate and interesting pieces of content to view on The Other Side but there’s also some pretty nefarious happenings there.
How do you connect to the Deep Web?: Though the Deep Web may be beyond those of you with little in the way of technical and Web savvy, it’s not impossible, nor even extremely difficult to visit. First, you’ll need to download Tor, the software that allows you to access the Deep Web. Tor is designed to provide Internet users with as close to complete anonymity as possible. The Tor website describes their software and their mission as follows.
Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location. Tor works with many of your existing applications, including web browsers, instant messaging clients, remote login, and other applications based on the TCP protocol.
You can use Tor on virtually any PC, Mac or even mobile devices like the iPhone and Android-operated smartphones. But, if, like me, you’re using Firefox, you next need to install the Torbutton. With the Tor software up and running and the Torbutton installed, you’ll see a small onion logo near the address bar of your browser. If you’re correctly logged in to the Tor network, you can click this button and begin to explore the Deep Web. This collection of Deep Web links should get you started. But, keep in mind, you won’t be able to maneuver in this new land quite as easily as you did back on the visible Web. There is no Google-like search engine of these sites that I’m aware of at the moment. Instead, it’s a collection of Wikis and BBS-like sites that aggregate links to other locations on the Deep Web. These sites generally have bizarre, unmemorable domain names like SdddEEDOHIIDdddgmomionw.onion. That’s right, instead of .com, these domains generally end in the .onion suffix. And because you’ll never remember how you got to where you are if you spend any significant time here, it’s best to save URLs or bookmark your way through this journey.
What can you find on the Deep Web?: The Silk Road is the most popular place to buy drugs on the Deep Web. From ecstasy, pure MDMA, marijuana, psychedelics and seeds to opiates, they have basically any drug with a userbase. They also have categories for ‘services’ like hacking, ‘lab supplies’ like sulfuric acid and liquid mercury, ‘money’ for stolen credit cards, travelers checks and forged bills and coins, ‘jewelry’ like uncut stones, stolen gold and other precious metals obtained via devious means and finally ‘weapons’ where they currently list a Glock 17 for sale out of Canada that “includes 1 clip with 9 live rounds.” Another Deep Web drug outlet, the General Store, focuses on Ketamine, MDMA, MDPV and DMT (you may need to Google some of those).
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