We could Jump to what is the Dark web or as known the Hidden web, but it better is to understand from where did it came or who created it. At first, knowing what is happening in the Dark web you might think, that Black Hats or as known Hackers created it, but no!
Actually, the dark web was created by the US government to allow spies to exchange information completely anonymously without being tracked. US military researchers developed the technology, known as Tor (The Onion Router) in the mid-1990s and released it into the public domain for everyone to use.
đźď¸ Image: 'Dark Web Origins' available in the full article here
The reason was so that they could stay anonymous â it would be harder to distinguish the governmentâs messages between spies if thousands of other people were using the same system for lots of different things. Tor now hosts roughly 60,000 hidden sites, that day to day increase by several hundred. Itâs called The Onion Router because it uses the technique of onion routing â making websites anonymous through layers of encryption. Most websites are also hosted on the .onion domain.
How does Onion Router or as tor browser helps to hide your identity?
Tor is a network of virtual tunnels that allows you to improve your privacy and security on the Internet. Tor works by sending your traffic through three or more random servers (also known as relays) in the Tor network. The last relay in the circuit (the âexit relayâ) then sends the traffic out onto the public Internet, so at the end, it is harder to track you. Also, tor browser doesnât save any information about you.
But that doesnât mean that you are 100% secured using the Tor as modern technology allows javascript to be downloaded onto your device and by using the provided functionality the Hacker can get your real IP. Therefore if you are browsing the Dark web it is more suggested to use extra security like VPN, but by choosing VPN to be careful to choose the one that isnât saving information about your traffic or create your own VPN onto VPS server.
Is the dark web illegal or legal?
The dark web isnât illegal in the UK, US, Canada, and also some EU countries as for sure I know that the Dark web also isnât illegal for Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia).
Thatâs partly because the dark web isnât inherently bad, despite often hosting criminal content. But itâs also extremely difficult to stop people from accessing the dark web â or even track who is using the dark web. So outright banning the dark web may not be ethical or enforceable.
If for example, someone would find a way to take down all tor servers it wouldnât help as people who are using the dark web would come up with new ways to continue their activity or by creating a new network or by extending the tor network. It is not so easy to lock down the dark web and tor.
Internet layers including the dark web and deep web
When the internet was introduced to the world nobody at that moment was thinking about what it will become, how many layers will there be and nobody was thinking about options to control it, Therefore The internet actually is made up of three different layers: the surface web, the deep web, and the dark web.
â ď¸ DECLASSIFIED / TRUNCATED VERSION
You are reading a truncated version of this technical guide.
To read the full, unedited deep-dive (including all configuration files, architecture diagrams, and high-res images), visit the original post on Valters IT Docs.
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