https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaAxFuzxNfk
The Feds (US) are part of an international campaign to shut down anonymous pedophile communities hosted on the dark underbelly of the Internet. Their target: 'the largest child porn facilitator on the planet'.
The attack was launched on an anonymous Dark Web online community tracked back to an NSA contractor in Virginia. Pedophile message boards that once operated with impunity are now going offline. The operation began with arrest of Eric Marques in Ireland, who was accused of running Freedom Hosting. The web hosting service that operates on the anonymous Tor network, facilitated the operations of several pedophile forums.
The U.S. government
appears to have been single handedly forcing the shut down of pedophiles
communities on the darker segments of the Internet by targeting the
heavily-encrypted, secretive sites called the 'Dark Web.' [The
Guardian, 2013]
The Surface Web is
content accessible by a search engine, while the opposite is true concerning
the Deep Web. The Dark Web then is classified as a small portion of the Deep
Web that has been intentionally hidden and is inaccessible through standard web
browsers.
The more popular content
residing on the Dark Web is found in the Tor network. The Tor network is an
anonymous network that can only be accessed with a special web browser, called
the Tor browser. This is the portion of the Internet most widely known for
illicit activities because of the anonymity associated with the Tor network.
Tor (The
Onion Router) is a free program that allows access to all the sites that hide
from Google. The project, of the same name, originated in the military sector,
sponsored the US Naval Research Laboratory and was supported by the Electronic
Frontier Foundation from 2004 to 2005. The software was under development and
maintenance of Tor Project.
Tor
uses numerous layers of security and encryption to render users anonymous online.
Tor client software routes Internet traffic through a worldwide volunteer
network of servers hiding user’s information eluding any activities of
monitoring. The data are encrypted multiple times passing through nodes, Tor
relays, of the network, ensuring user privacy.
In
October 2013, government authorities shut down one of the most popular
anonymous illegal drug distributor on the web, Silk Road 2.0. The online
marketplace was part of the 'dark web', in which users could purchase illicit
goods, like drugs and weapons, on sites invisible from standard search engines.
Before it was shut down, Silk Road 2.0 grossed roughly $8 million in drug sales
per month, typically in difficult-to-trace currencies such as bitcoin.
"...There are the usual
categories – Business and File Sharing for example, and then there’s some more
hard core stuff – Adult and Hacking that includes child porn.
The next stop is Hidden Wiki.
This is the deformed cousin of Gumtree and it allows users to buy and sell anything
they want. We search around for a little while and find stolen goods, fake
artwork, firearms, drugs, explosives, prostitutes, party girls (whatever they
are), guard dogs and fake passports. Finally the Hit Men tab catches our
attention and we find ourselves looking at a long list of assassins. There is
generally no mention of price but the titles on the ads will give you an idea
of what’s on offer..." From
an anonymous Dark Web viewer reporting for Vulture Magazine
Normally, file
sharing and internet browsing activity can be tracked by law enforcement
through each user's unique IP address that can be traced back to an individual
computer. The Tor network on the Dark Web hides the IP address and the activity
of the user.
What
is the Dark Web?
The Dark Web is a term that refers specifically to
a group of websites that are publicly visible, but hide the IP addresses of the
servers that run them. They can be accessed by any web user, but it is very
difficult to distinguish the authors of the sites. These sites cannot be found
using conventional search engines.
Listed below are a few of the
firearms sold in Dec. 2012 on Silk Road:
*
IMI 9 mm uzi
*
44 magnum Desert Eagle
*
50 rounds of .22 ammunituzi
*
9 mm machine pistol with silencer
*
9 mm Beretta handgun
Along
with the addition of weapons, Silk Road's main trade—illegal drugs—is booming.
A few month earlier there were 343 items for sale under the drugs category;
that's climbed to 1821 by the end of that year. Today the site has a more
clean, professional appearance and smoother-running. They're even hiring; you
need only to visit the new "careers" section, where you can apply to
be a Silk Road customer service rep (Question 3: "What is your drug of
choice"?).
This results from
Tor; most sites on the Dark Web hide their identity using the Tor encryption
tool. Known for its end-user-hiding properties, it can be used to hide your
identity and obscure your location. A website running through Tor has much of
the same effect; it multiplies the effect. Access to websites on the Dark Web
requires the use of Tor encryption. Just as the end user's IP is bounced
through several layers of encryption to appear to be at another IP address on
the Tor network, so is that of the website.
However, Tor is
not used by all Dark Web sites; some use similar services, e.g., I2P, which is
used by the new Silk Road Reloaded. The principle remains the same; user access
requires the same encryption tool as the site and the user must know where to
find the site in order to type in the URL.
Dark Web or Deep Web? (Or
Deepnet, Invisible Web, or Hidden Web) ???
Infamous examples
of Dark Web sites include the Silk Road and its copycats. The Silk Road was a
venue for the buying and selling of recreational drugs. However, there are
legitimate uses for the Dark Web. People operating within closed, totalitarian
societies can use the Dark Web to communicate with the outside world. And given
recent revelations about US- and UK government monitoring web use, a user may
use the Dark Web as an alternative communication tool.
According to a study conducted
by Gareth Owen, a computer science researcher at the University of Portsmouth
in the UK, more than four out of five visits to Tor hidden sites were linked to
online destinations with content related to pedophilia, which is over five
times as many as any other categories of content that researchers found in the
study. The findings are expected to question supporters of the “dark net,” who
defend the concept claiming that it is crucial to protect users’ privacy.
Before we did this study, it was certainly my view that the dark net is a good
thing,” Owen said. “But it’s hampering the rights of children
and creating a place where pedophiles can act with impunity.
Over
a period of six months, Owen and his team of researchers identified about
80,000 hidden sites on Tor, and most of them did not stay online for a long
time. Although the number of sites containing images of child abuse is small,
the traffic they generated -- about 75 percent of all visits observed in the
study -- outnumbered that of other sites. However, Owen said that it is yet to
be concluded that actual users were behind all the visits to pedophilia sites.
Although all the
terms Dark Web, Deep Web, Deepnet, etc. tend to be used interchangeably, they
don't refer to exactly the same thing. The 'Deep Web' refers to all web pages
that search engines cannot find. Thus the 'Deep Web' includes the 'Dark Web',
but also includes all user databases, webmail pages, registration-required web
forums, and pages behind paywalls. There are large numbers of such pages, and
most exist for mundane reasons.
'Dark Internet' is
also a term sometimes used to describe further examples of networks, databases
or even websites that cannot be reached over the internet. In this case either
for technical reasons, or because the properties contain niche information that
few people will want, or in some cases because the data is private.
The phrases 'Dark
Web' or 'Deep Web' are typically used by print and web media to refer to
secretive online worlds. To a greater extent, the 'Dark Internet' is basically
uneventful, where scientists store raw data for research. The Deep Web is a
more flamboyant term for all web pages that are not indexed for search.
The
US Department of Homeland Security announced on March 2014 that it has arrested
14 men who were allegedly operating a child pornography Web site on the
anonymous Tor network.
The
arrests were the culmination of one of the agency’s largest ever online child
exploitation investigations — dubbed “Operation Round Table.” The authorities
have identified 251 victims who were exploited on the site. The majority of the
victims, 243, were male and their ages ranged from 3 to 17; they were
identified as being from 39 US states and five foreign countries. (United
Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Belgium)
The
underground subscription-based Web site was allegedly led by Jonathan Johnson,
27, of Abita Springs, La. According to Homeland Security, he admitted to
creating fake female personas on social networks to lure in male children and
convince them to record explicit videos of themselves.
Accessing
the Dark Web
To enter the Dark
Web, you need only to install and use Tor (www.torproject.org) and download the
Tor Browser Bundle, which contains all the required tools. Run the downloaded
file, choose an extraction location, then open the folder and click Start Tor
Browser. The Vidalia Control Panel will automatically handle the randomized
network setup and, when Tor is ready, the browser will open; it must be closed
to disconnect from the network. Users recommend blocking your laptop's webcam
to prevent spying while using the browser.
Once you get into
the Dark Web, sites selling drugs, illegal narcotics, prostitution, guns, and
pornographic material are but a click away. According several researches, the
principal search engines index only a small portion of the overall web content,
the remaining part is unknown to the majority of web users.
A simple but
accurate definition of the Deep Web may be derived from a statement by the
founder of BrightPlanet, Mike Bergman; he compared searching on the Internet
today 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.
Ordinary search
engines to find content on the web using software called “crawlers”. This
technique is ineffective for finding the hidden resources of the Web that could
be classified into the following categories:
Dynamic content:
dynamic pages which are returned in response to a submitted query or accessed
only through a form, especially if open-domain input elements (such as text
fields) are used; such fields are hard to navigate without domain knowledge.
Unlinked content: pages which are not linked to by other pages, which may
prevent Web crawling programs from accessing the content. This content is
referred to as pages without backlinks (or inlinks).
Private Web: sites
that require registration and login(password-protected resources).
Contextual Web:
pages with content varying for different access contexts (e.g., ranges of
client IP addresses or previous navigation sequence).
Limited access
content: sites that limit access to their pages in a technical way (e.g., using
the Robots Exclusion Standard, CAPTCHAs, or no-cache Pragma HTTP headers which
prohibit search engines from browsing them and creating cached copies).
Scripted content:
pages that are only accessible through links produced by JavaScript as well as
content dynamically downloaded from Web servers via Flash or Ajax solutions.
Non-HTML/text
content: textual content encoded in multimedia (image or video) files or
specific file formats not handled by search engines. Text content using the
Gopher protocol and files hosted on FTP that are not indexed by most search
engines. Engines such as Google do not index pages outside of HTTP or HTTPS.
A parallel web
that has a much wider number of information represents an invaluable resource
for private companies, governments, and especially cyber crime. In the
imagination of many users, the DeepWeb term is associated with the concept of
anonymity that goes with criminal intents the cannot be pursued because
submerged in an inaccessible world.
What
happened after the Federal investigation?
The FBI has
requested that Marques, 28, be extradited to the United States to stand trial.
But the operation did not stop hackers. The Daily Dot reports that the day after Marques was
arrested, hackers uploaded malicious code to Freedom Hosting's servers. The
code was designed to attack the browsers of anyone who accessed the anonymous
sites. It reportedly collected internet browser data and surfing history, which
could help identify the location of users of the anonymous site. As a result of
the attack, pedophiles who had previously trafficked images of child sexual
abuse without fear of being discovered since the Dark Web offered anonymity,
realized that their identities could be compromised. Pedophile message boards
that were once bustling with activity suddenly went dark.
The administrator
of the 4Pedo forum, which operates on the Dark Web, posted a warning to users
before he took the forum offline: 'ALL BOARDS HAVE BEEN DELETED TO PROTECT YOU!
IF THE BOARDS COME BACK UP, IT IS NOT ME RUNNING THE SITE ANYMORE!'
Numerous other
pedophile sites on the Dark Web that use Tor encryption have gone offline, as
well.
Along with the
lingering child-porn sites, users can freely purchase any number of illegal
items on the site - drugs, stolen identities, assassins, illegal weapons and explosives.
Users should also
expect that they could be the next target of the U.S. government attack.
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