The Organization Of The Dark Web
September 7, 2018
The Internet is a sprawling, unorganized digital expanse, while the Dark Web is smaller, underground, unorganized trailer court. Because it is smaller, it is easier to create a Dark Web map. The Recorded Future took on the endeavor and described the Dark Web’s structure in: “Dark Networks: Social Network Analysis Of Dark Web Communities.”
While the Dark Web is considerably smaller than the Internet it is quite big and there is a huge amount of data that cannot be classified. Using social network analysis, Recorded Future found three distinct Dark Web communities:
“We found three distinct communities of actors in dark web and special-access sites: low-tier underground forums, higher-tier dark web forums, and dark web markets. These three clusters line up with our expert intuition of the dark web, appearing almost as if no other sensible organization is possible in retrospect. Additionally we found notable cross-posting between low-tier and higher-tier forums. The results of this research are directly reflected in Recorded Future’s product and ontology. This new categorization helps security teams obtain targeted, relevant dark web intelligence, facilitates their understanding of threats, and opens a window into the methods, tactics, and motivations of threat actors.”
The next part of the article explains how Recorded Future collected its data and discovered patterns between the three tiers. From the gathered data, they made visualizations of the connections between the tiers. The visualizations yielded more information about the communities, including that the low-tier underground forums are free, open access, and house the novices. The higher-tier Dark Web forums are restricted through a vetting process, sites are hosted on Tor, and experienced criminals and Dark Web markets are generally open, because they are selling services.
The Dark Web has various levels and interconnections between the three tiers. There are restricted communities that overlap with each other and there is a huge commerce section. It sounds like the regular Internet, except it deals in illegal services and goods. Google, along with In-Q-Tel, was an early investor in Recorded Future.
Whitney Grace, September 7, 2018
Comments
One Response to “The Organization Of The Dark Web”
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
Buono blog entry. Io sicuramente apprezzamento questo sito. Continua il buon lavoro Grazie!