THE DEEP WEB AND THE DARKNET

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7 STIP | THE DEEP WEB AND THE DARKNET These websites are usually narrower, but with much deeper content material, as compared to regular surface sites. Furthermore, because most of the materials are protected content, the overall quality of the content from the Deep Web is typically better and more valuable than that of the Surface Web. It is also estimated that more than 50 percent of the Deep Web content is located in topic-specific directories (www. thehiddenwiki.net), making it even more accessible and relevant to targeted searches. And the Deep Web and Darknet are growing. Multiple technologies, such as ubiquitous computing, distributed/cloud computing, mobile computing, and sensor networks, have all contributed to the expansion of the Deep Web. Advances in secure/anonymous web hosting services, cryptocurrency/Dark Wallet, and development of crimeware are further contributing to the growth of the Darknet. A variety of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Darkcoin, or Peercoin (see coinmarketcap.com for a complete listing) have been in use for anonymous business transactions that are conducted within and across most Darknet marketplaces. Hackers for hire and multilingual call centers have also accelerated the growth of Darknet. Of course, there are also plenty of legitimate uses of the Darket by journalists, political dissidents, whistle-blowers, and human rights advocates. Not surprisingly, Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning, Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden all relied heavily on the Darknet for their cause and activities. HOW TO ACCESS THE DEEP WEB AND DARKNET When film director James Cameron succeeded in a record-breaking dive to the deepest point of world’s ocean, he tweeted: “Hitting bottom never felt so good. Can’t wait to share what I’m seeing w/ you.” But to get to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, Cameron relied on a custom-built submersible vehicle. By the same token, to explore the Deep Web and Darknet, we need some special tools and techniques. Some of them are similar to or closely related to those we use to explore the Surface Web. Depending on one’s overall goals, different tools and techniques will help reach different depths. For most users, there are generally two different but related approaches to access the Deep Web and Darknet: ■■ ■■ Use special search engines accessed from regular browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc. Use special search engines that can be accessed only from a TOR browser. The research community and those familiar with technology can go even deeper by developing a custom-built crawling program using linkcrawling techniques and API programming skills. One easy way to gain access to the Deep Web is to use alternative/special search engines that are designed specifically for the purpose. These alternative search engines are designed to access different parts of the Deep Web (see Table 1), but the challenge is that all search engines developed so far only crawl or index a small part of the Deep Web. Therefore, it is still necessary to visit the right online directory or hidden web site listings (e.g. https:// sites.google.com/site/howtoaccessthedeepnet/ working-links-to-the-deep-web). Since these websites are not indexed, they will not be found using normal search tools. However, their URLs can be found using other means and, once the
8 URL is known, one can then access some of these sites on the Deep Web using regular browsers. Some public databases are considered part of the Deep Web because most of their content cannot be crawled or indexed by usual search engines. For most users, they may be interacting with part of the Deep Web regularly, but they may not be aware of it. For example, the directory of the U.S. Library of Congress (www. loc.gov) is an online database that resides on the Deep Web. Other sites utilizing the Deep Web include economic data site FreeLunch. com, Census.gov, Copyright.gov, PubMed, Web of Science, WWW Virtual Library, Directory of Open Access Journals, FindLaw, and Wolfram Alpha. In addition to these publicly available databases, there are plenty of pay-to-use databases (such as Westlaw and LexisNexis) and subscription-only services (found at most academic libraries) that utilize the Deep Web. One can only have access to these databases if they subscribe to them. In addition, there is also a vast amount of information that is private and password-protected (such as credit card and PayPal accounts) located on the Deep Web. Access to this part of the Deep Web is technologically restricted and legally protected. With the prevalence of Web 2.0 and smartphone devices, a plethora of information is stored in various social networks that are generally not accessible through regular search engines. Many of them require users to be authorized (via registration or by becoming friends with other people) to access the data. Some of these services, like Twitter and Facebook, provide a public application program interface, or API, so that users can acquire the information in the network at a vast scale. But many of them, like YikYak and Wechat (both require log-in ID), limit users’ accessibility to their massive database for reasons of security and privacy. Instant messaging (IM) is another cistern of information in the Deep Web. Previously taking the form of online chatrooms, IM services provide a private and convenient space for people to exchange information, which is usually person-to-person and not archived. This is widely used in online chatting and technical support. Nowadays, some mobile applications allow users to save their messaging history locally so that they can be accessed later if necessary. In addition, instant messaging is becoming more multimedia based, making it harder to archive the messaging history. To access this part of the Deep Web, the best way to record the information is while the conversation is taking place, via screenshots or videotaping. The Darknet has been increasingly used for trades, conversations, and information/file sharing and transfer in recent years because users are capable of maintaining anonymity, keeping their online activities private. To access the anonymous sites of the Deep Web, visitors must use a TOR (The Onion Router) browser (https:// www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html. en) to access websites with the “.onion” domain. Different from Surface Web browsers, the TOR browser allows users to connect to web pages anonymously, making it extremely difficult for anyone to track one’s online activities if one follows all the protocols as required by TOR. Unlike the Surface Web, Darknet pages on the TOR network tend to be unreliable, often going down for hours or days or sometimes
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