Darknet

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Surface web in relation to Deep web and Dark web Iceberg of Webs.svg
Surface web in relation to Deep web and Dark web

A darknet or dark net is an overlay network within the Internet that can only be accessed with specific software, configurations, or authorization, [1] and often uses a unique customized communication protocol. Two typical darknet types are social networks [2] (usually used for file hosting with a peer-to-peer connection), [3] and anonymity proxy networks such as Tor via an anonymized series of connections. [4]

Contents

The term "darknet" was popularized by major news outlets and was associated with Tor Onion services when the infamous drug bazaar Silk Road used it, [5] despite the terminology being unofficial. Technology such as Tor, I2P, and Freenet are intended to defend digital rights by providing security, anonymity, or censorship resistance and are used for both illegal and legitimate reasons. Anonymous communication between whistle-blowers, activists, journalists and news organisations is also facilitated by darknets through use of applications such as SecureDrop. [6]

Terminology

The term originally described computers on ARPANET that were hidden, programmed to receive messages but not respond to or acknowledge anything, thus remaining invisible and in the dark. [7]

Since ARPANET, the usage of dark net has expanded to include friend-to-friend networks (usually used for file sharing with a peer-to-peer connection) and privacy networks such as Tor. [8] [9] The reciprocal term for a darknet is a clearnet or the surface web when referring to content indexable by search engines. [10]

The term "darknet" is often used interchangeably with "dark web" because of the quantity of hidden services on Tor's darknet. Additionally, the term is often inaccurately used interchangeably with the deep web because of Tor's history as a platform that could not be search-indexed. Mixing uses of both these terms has been described as inaccurate, with some commentators recommending the terms be used in distinct fashions. [11] [12] [13]

Origins

"Darknet" was coined in the 1970s to designate networks isolated from ARPANET (the government-founded military/academical network which evolved into the Internet), for security purposes. [7] Darknet addresses could receive data from ARPANET but did not appear in the network lists and would not answer pings or other inquiries.

The term gained public acceptance following publication of "The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution", a 2002 paper by Peter Biddle, Paul England, Marcus Peinado, and Bryan Willman, four employees of Microsoft who argued the presence of the darknet was the primary hindrance to the development of workable digital rights management (DRM) technologies and made copyright infringement inevitable. [14] This paper described "darknet" more generally as any type of parallel network that is encrypted or requires a specific protocol to allow a user to connect to it. [1]

Sub-cultures

Journalist J. D. Lasica, in his 2005 book Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation, described the darknet's reach encompassing file sharing networks. [15] Subsequently, in 2014, journalist Jamie Bartlett in his book The Dark Net used the term to describe a range of underground and emergent subcultures, including camgirls, cryptoanarchists, darknet drug markets, self harm communities, social media racists, and transhumanists. [16]

Uses

Darknets in general may be used for various reasons, such as:

Software

All darknets require specific software installed or network configurations made to access them, such as Tor, which can be accessed via a customized browser from Vidalia (aka the Tor browser bundle), or alternatively via a proxy configured to perform the same function.

Active

Tor is the most popular instance of a darknet, [19] and it is often mistakenly thought to be the only online tool that facilitates access to darknets.

A cartogram illustrating the average number of Tor users per day between August 2012 and July 2013 Geographies of Tor.png
A cartogram illustrating the average number of Tor users per day between August 2012 and July 2013

Alphabetical list:

No longer supported

Defunct

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hyphanet</span> Peer-to-peer Internet platform for censorship-resistant communication

Hyphanet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant, anonymous communication. It uses a decentralized distributed data store to keep and deliver information, and has a suite of free software for publishing and communicating on the Web without fear of censorship. Both Freenet and some of its associated tools were originally designed by Ian Clarke, who defined Freenet's goal as providing freedom of speech on the Internet with strong anonymity protection.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Distributed hash table</span> Decentralized distributed system with lookup service

A distributed hash table (DHT) is a distributed system that provides a lookup service similar to a hash table. Key–value pairs are stored in a DHT, and any participating node can efficiently retrieve the value associated with a given key. The main advantage of a DHT is that nodes can be added or removed with minimum work around re-distributing keys. Keys are unique identifiers which map to particular values, which in turn can be anything from addresses, to documents, to arbitrary data. Responsibility for maintaining the mapping from keys to values is distributed among the nodes, in such a way that a change in the set of participants causes a minimal amount of disruption. This allows a DHT to scale to extremely large numbers of nodes and to handle continual node arrivals, departures, and failures.

BitTorrent, also referred to simply as torrent, is a communication protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), which enables users to distribute data and electronic files over the Internet in a decentralized manner. The protocol is developed and maintained by Rainberry, Inc., and was first released in 2001.

An anonymous P2P communication system is a peer-to-peer distributed application in which the nodes, which are used to share resources, or participants are anonymous or pseudonymous. Anonymity of participants is usually achieved by special routing overlay networks that hide the physical location of each node from other participants.

The deep web, invisible web, or hidden web are parts of the World Wide Web whose contents are not indexed by standard web search-engine programs. This is in contrast to the "surface web", which is accessible to anyone using the Internet. Computer scientist Michael K. Bergman is credited with inventing the term in 2001 as a search-indexing term.

The Invisible Internet Project (I2P) is an anonymous network layer that allows for censorship-resistant, peer-to-peer communication. Anonymous connections are achieved by encrypting the user's traffic, and sending it through a volunteer-run network of roughly 55,000 computers distributed around the world. Given the high number of possible paths the traffic can transit, a third party watching a full connection is unlikely. The software that implements this layer is called an "I2P router", and a computer running I2P is called an "I2P node". I2P is free and open sourced, and is published under multiple licenses.

The Free Haven Project was formed in 1999 by a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology students with the aim to develop a secure, decentralized system of data storage. The group's work led to a collaboration with the United States Naval Research Laboratory to develop Tor, funded by DARPA.

A friend-to-friend computer network is a type of peer-to-peer network in which users only make direct connections with people they know. Passwords or digital signatures can be used for authentication.

anoNet is a decentralized friend-to-friend network built using VPNs and software BGP routers. anoNet works by making it difficult to learn the identities of others on the network allowing them to anonymously host IPv4 and IPv6 services. One of the primary goals of anoNet is to protect its participants' rights of speech and expression.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Perfect Dark (P2P)</span> Peer to peer software

Perfect Dark (パーフェクトダーク) is a peer-to-peer file-sharing (P2P) application from Japan designed for use with Microsoft Windows. It was launched in 2006. Its author is known by the pseudonym Kaichō. Perfect Dark was developed with the intention for it to be the successor to both Winny and Share software. While Japan's Association for Copyright of Computer Software reported that in January 2014, the number of nodes connected on Perfect Dark was less than on Share, but more than on Winny, Netagent in 2018 reported Winny being the largest with 50 000 nodes followed by Perfect Dark with 30 000 nodes followed by Share with 10 000. Netagent asserts that the number of nodes on Perfect Dark have fallen since 2015 while the numbers of Winny hold steady. Netagent reports that users of Perfect Dark are most likely to share books/manga.

Garlic routing is a variant of onion routing that encrypts multiple messages together to make it more difficult for attackers to perform traffic analysis and to increase the speed of data transfer.

An anonymizer or an anonymous proxy is a tool that attempts to make activity on the Internet untraceable. It is a proxy server computer that acts as an intermediary and privacy shield between a client computer and the rest of the Internet. It accesses the Internet on the user's behalf, protecting personal information of the user by hiding the client computer's identifying information such as IP addresses. Anonymous proxy is the opposite of transparent proxy, which sends user information in the connection request header. Commercial anonymous proxies are usually sold as VPN services.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phex</span> Peer to peer file sharing client

Phex is a peer-to-peer file sharing client for the gnutella network, released under the terms of the GNU General Public License, so Phex is free software. Phex is based on Java SE 5.0 or later.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Retroshare</span> Free software

Retroshare is a free and open-source peer-to-peer communication and file sharing app based on a friend-to-friend network built by GNU Privacy Guard (GPG). Optionally peers may exchange certificates and IP addresses to their friends and vice versa.

Internet censorship circumvention is the use of various methods and tools to bypass internet censorship.

The dark web is the World Wide Web content that exists on darknets that use the Internet but require specific software, configurations, or authorization to access. Through the dark web, private computer networks can communicate and conduct business anonymously without divulging identifying information, such as a user's location. The dark web forms a small part of the deep web, the part of the web not indexed by web search engines, although sometimes the term deep web is mistakenly used to refer specifically to the dark web.

A darknet market is a commercial website on the dark web that operates via darknets such as Tor and I2P. They function primarily as black markets, selling or brokering transactions involving drugs, cyber-arms, weapons, counterfeit currency, stolen credit card details, forged documents, unlicensed pharmaceuticals, steroids, and other illicit goods as well as the sale of legal products. In December 2014, a study by Gareth Owen from the University of Portsmouth suggested the second most popular sites on Tor were darknet markets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clearnet (networking)</span> Publicly accessible part of the Internet

Clearnet is a term that typically refers to the publicly accessible Internet. Sometimes "clearnet" is used as a synonym for "surface web"—excluding both the darknet and the deep web. The World Wide Web is one of the most popular distributed services on the Internet, and the surface web is composed of the web pages and databases that are indexed by traditional search engines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ZeroNet</span> Peer to peer web hosting

ZeroNet is a decentralized web-like network of peer-to-peer users, created by Tamas Kocsis in 2015, programming for the network was based in Budapest, Hungary; is built in Python; and is fully open source. Instead of having an IP address, sites are identified by a public key. The private key allows the owner of a site to sign and publish changes, which propagate through the network. Sites can be accessed through an ordinary web browser when using the ZeroNet application, which acts as a local webhost for such pages. In addition to using bitcoin cryptography, ZeroNet uses trackers from the BitTorrent network to negotiate connections between peers. ZeroNet is not anonymous by default, but it supports routing traffic through the Tor network.

Netstalking is a searching activity carried out within the limits of Internet, aimed at finding little-known, inaccessible, forbidden, shocking and rarely-visited objects, including their analysis, systematisation and storage. The objects found are either aesthetically pleasing or informationally fulfilling to a seeker.

References

  1. 1 2 Gayard, Laurent (2018). Darknet: Geopolitics and Uses. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. p. 158. ISBN   9781786302021.
  2. ↑ Wood, Jessica (July 2010) [1 January 2010, the majority was completed by the original date]. "The Darknet: A Digital Copyright Revolution". Richmond Journal of Law & Technology. 16 (4): 14. Archived from the original on 24 November 2020. Retrieved 19 March 2020.
  3. ↑ Mansfield-Devine, Steve (1 December 2009). "Darknets". Computer Fraud & Security. 2009 (12): 4–6. doi:10.1016/S1361-3723(09)70150-2.
  4. ↑ Pradhan, Sayam (2020). "Anonymous". The Darkest Web: The Dark Side of the Internet. India: Pothi. p. 9. ISBN   9798561755668.
  5. ↑ Martin, James (2014). Drugs on the Dark Net: How Cryptomarkets are Transforming the Global Trade in Illicit Drugs. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 2. ISBN   9781349485666.
  6. ↑ Press Foundation, Freedom of the. "SecureDrop". github. Freedom of the Press Foundation. Archived from the original on 16 April 2022. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
  7. 1 2 "Darknet.se - About darknet". 2010-08-12. Archived from the original on 2010-08-12. Retrieved 2019-11-05.
  8. ↑ Wood, Jessica (2010). "The Darknet: A Digital Copyright Revolution" (PDF). Richmond Journal of Law and Technology. 16 (4): 15–17. Archived (PDF) from the original on 16 May 2013. Retrieved 25 October 2011.
  9. ↑ Mansfield-Devine, Steve (December 2009). "Darknets". Computer Fraud & Security. 2009 (12): 4–6. doi:10.1016/S1361-3723(09)70150-2.
  10. ↑ Barratt, Monica (15 January 2015). "A Discussion About Dark Net Terminology". Drugs, Internet, Society. Archived from the original on 18 January 2016. Retrieved 14 June 2015.
  11. ↑ "Clearing Up Confusion – Deep Web vs. Dark Web". BrightPlanet. Archived from the original on 2015-05-16. Retrieved 2015-06-03.
  12. ↑ NPR Staff (25 May 2014). "Going Dark: The Internet Behind The Internet". Archived from the original on 27 May 2015. Retrieved 29 May 2015.
  13. ↑ Greenberg, Andy (19 November 2014). "Hacker Lexicon: What Is the Dark Web?". Archived from the original on 7 June 2015. Retrieved 6 June 2015.
  14. ↑ Biddle, Peter; England, Paul; Peinado, Marcus; Willman, Bryan (18 November 2002). The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution (PDF). ACM Workshop on Digital Rights Management. Washington, D.C.: Microsoft Corporation. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 July 2012. Retrieved 10 October 2012.
  15. ↑ Lasica, J. D. (2005). Darknets: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation . Hoboken, NJ: J. Wiley & Sons. ISBN   0-471-68334-5.
  16. ↑ Ian, Burrell (28 August 2014). "The Dark Net: Inside the Digital Underworld by Jamie Bartlett, book review". Archived from the original on 20 June 2015. Retrieved 3 June 2015.
  17. ↑ Taylor, Harriet (19 May 2016). "Hit men, drugs and malicious teens: the darknet is going mainstream". CNBC . Archived from the original on 13 June 2018. Retrieved 9 September 2017.
  18. ↑ "Who uses Tor?". Tor Project. Retrieved 14 May 2017.
  19. ↑ "Anticounterfeiting on the Dark Web – Distinctions between the Surface Web, Dark Web and Deep Web" (PDF). 13 April 2015. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 June 2015. Retrieved 1 June 2015.
  20. ↑ Bennett, Krista; Grothoff, Christian; Kügler, Dennis (2003). Dingledine, Roger (ed.). Privacy Enhancing Technologies Third International Workshop (PET 2003) . Springer-Verlag (Heidelberg). pp.  141–175. ISBN   9783540206101.
  21. ↑ Xiang, Yang; Lopez, Javier; Jay Kuo, C.-C.; Zhou, Wanlei, eds. (2012). Cyberspace Safety and Security: 4th International Symposium : Proceedings (CSS 2012). Springer (Heidelberg). pp. 89, 90. ISBN   9783642353628.
  22. ↑ Young Hyun Kwon (20 May 2015). "Riffle: An Efficient Communication System with Strong Anonymity" (PDF). Retrieved 12 July 2016.
  23. ↑ Larry Hardesty, MIT News Office (11 July 2016). "How to stay anonymous online". Archived from the original on 12 July 2016. Retrieved 12 July 2016.

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