A myth falls: the ‘dark 'web is not what is under the tip of the iceberg, it is much smaller

The Internet and conspiracy theory are often synonymous.The cause lies in the poor knowledge of phenomena.Knowing is power and when little is known, it is more likely to believe stories or even lies.

One of the strongest myths on the web is the so-called dark web , a mysterious kingdom ruled by dark forces.Maybe it's a bit of an exaggeration.

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An investigation by Recorded Future, a well-known company specializing in cyber intelligence , shows the limited and circumscribed reality of the dark web .The classic image of the iceberg, under whose tip a huge submerged part would be hidden, should be reversed.The surface of the network is the predominant part.The submerged, the dark web , is the smallest a.

The secret internet is made up of networks, the darknets , which include websites that can only be accessed with softwares individuals.Recorded Future has found 55,828 domains.onion (the one used by these pages), of which only 8,416 were active during the study.The open internet is made up of more than 200 million active pages.Point and end with the 'roll' of the iceberg.

A myth falls: the ‘dark 'web is not what is under the tip of the iceberg, it is much smaller

Dark Web: a small and inefficient world

Clarified that hidden sites are only 0.005% of the WWW , Recorded Future also indicates that the dark web is disorganized and unreliable The most popular pages work less than 90% of the time.Even one of the best known markets is offline for 35% of the time.By comparison, surface websites are an example of effectiveness.Facebook, for example, is online 99.95% of the time.

The literature related to these 'favelas' of the Internet has made us imagine super organized criminal gangs, capable of easily moving huge amounts of Bitcoin, weapons and drugs with one click.The reality is that just a handful of pages of the dark website live up to their reputation .Specifically, researchers have identified eight webs.onion, which can only be accessed by invitation, representing the level highest criminal activity.

The dark web is also a far west full of scams .The addresses of the sites are alphanumeric combinations like 7rmath4ro2of2a42.onion.Just skip a letter or number and there is a risk of being in a page created specifically to defraud the unfortunate.And it is also a very varied place: 86% of the pages are in English (compared with 54% of the clear web ), followed by Russian (2.8%) and German (1.6%).

A myth falls: the ‘dark 'web is not what is under the tip of the iceberg, it is much smaller

Deep and Dark Web, two different things

The fact that the ambivalence of the terms deep and dark web has fueled the confusion has been two different things.We could say that the network is composed of three zones .The first is the one that we all know and frequent.Then there is one that, for various reasons (for example, because it is composed of databases, intranets , closed files), cannot be reached by search engines like Google.This is the deep web.

Finally, there is the area that allows anonymity, both for those who administer a site and for those who visit it, a place that can only be accessed through software and networks that allow data transfer anonymously.It is the dark web.There are several systems for anonymous communication on the internet, but the best known is the Tor project (the acronym for The Onion Router ).

In its simplest version, Tor is a browser that everyone can download and use for normal pages, but protecting their privacy and identity.(How not?) By the Pentagon agency, DARPA, Tor works similarly to money laundering .User data passes through many routers, which makes it almost impossible to understand where the original request comes from, discover the administrator of a website or who uses these services.

Most people who use Tor (around 3 million a day) move on the surface.Only three percent of these (less than one hundred thousand people worldwide) use the browser to access the dark web.Where that is true, you can find everything .Drug markets like Silk Road, which has been dismantled by the FBI, cybercriminal bazaars, resale of weapons and communities of all kinds.

A myth falls: the ‘dark 'web is not what is under the tip of the iceberg, it is much smaller

Not everything is bad

However, reducing the dark web to illegal purposes for which it is used would be a serious mistake.The fact that Tor allows avoiding surveillance measures also makes it very useful for political dissidents living in authoritarian regimes .In fact, the most visited website by Tor users is Facebook.Since 2014, there is a version of the social network that can be browsed according to the parameters of anonymity of the dark web.

Also many newspapers, including 'The New York Times', have opened a detachment in the darknets to provide more security and anonymity to their sources .they communicated with Edward Snowden, the source of the Datagate , they did it through Tor.Admas, an investigation conducted by the Insikt Group has shown that criminal activity is largely carried out on open platforms.social networks and instant messaging applications like WhatsApp and Telegram.

Finally, the dark side of the network is shrinking .The constant decline in pages and active users is mainly due to the disappearance of two of its most widespread services.The web hosting Freedom Hosting II and the e-mail Sigaint.The first was the victim of a computer attack, after it was discovered that it was home to a child pornography page.When the service closed, it took about 10,000 websites with it.The second went out two years ago, erasing forever all correspondence.Pirates are running out of caves, and we without myths.

Images | iStock

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