Darknet: Pounding Out a Boring Beat

October 17, 2024

Just a humanoid processing information related to online services and information access.

PC World finally got around to sharing the biggest Internet secret: “the Darknet.

The Darknet is better known as the Dark Web and it has been around for while. PC World is treating the Dark Web like a newly discovered secret in: “What Is The Darknet? How The Web’s Secretive, Hidden Underbelly Works.”

If you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade, the Dark Web is the flipside of the Internet. It’s where criminals, freedom fighters, and black marketeers thrive under anonymity. Anything can be bought on the Dark Web, including people, drugs, false passports, credit cards, perusal information, weapons, and more.

The Dark Web is accessed through the downloadable Tor browser. The Tor browser allows users to remain anonymous as long as they don’t enter in any personal information during a session. Tor also allows users to visit “hidden” Web sites that use a special web address ending with a .onion extension. Links to .onion Web sites are found the Hidden Wiki, Haystack, Ahmia, and Torch.

Tor hides Web sites inside layers similar to an onion:

“In order to conceal its origin, the Tor software installed on the user’s PC routes each data packet via various randomly selected computers (nodes) before it is then transferred to the open internet via an exit node.

The data is specially secured so that it cannot be read on any of the Tor computers involved. This entails multiple instances of encryption using the onion-skin principle: Each of the nodes involved in the transport decrypts one layer. As a result, the packet that arrives at a node looks different to eavesdroppers than the packet that the node sends on.”

It’s not illegal to use the Tor and it’s a great tool to browse the Internet anonymously. The problem with Tor is that it is slower than regular Internet, because of the anonymization process rendering.

The article is fill of technical jargon, but does a decent job of explaining the basics of the Darknet. But “real” news? Nope.

Whitney Grace, October 17, 2024

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Dark Web, News

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.