Inside the Dark Web

Erdal Ozkaya, Rafiqul Islam

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781000012286
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Cyber Security
• Index: Computer Science

Inside the Dark Web provides a broad overview of emerging digital threats and computer crimes, with an emphasis on cyberstalking, hacktivism, fraud and identity theft, and attacks on critical infrastructure. The book also analyzes the online underground economy and digital currencies and cybercrime on the dark web. The book further explores how dark web crimes are conducted on the surface web in new mediums, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and peer-to-peer file sharing systems as well as dark web forensics and mitigating techniques.

This book starts with the fundamentals of the dark web along with explaining its threat landscape. The book then introduces the Tor browser, which is used to access the dark web ecosystem. The book continues to take a deep dive into cybersecurity criminal activities in the dark net and analyzes the malpractices used to secure your system. Furthermore, the book digs deeper into the forensics of dark web, web content analysis, threat intelligence, IoT, crypto market, and cryptocurrencies. This book is a comprehensive guide for those who want to understand the dark web quickly.

After reading Inside the Dark Web, you'll understand

• The core concepts of the dark web.
• The different theoretical and cross-disciplinary approaches of the dark web and its evolution in the context of emerging crime threats.
• The forms of cybercriminal activity through the dark web and the technological and "social engineering" methods used to undertake such crimes.
• The behavior and role of offenders and victims in the dark web and analyze and assess the impact of cybercrime and the effectiveness of their mitigating techniques on the various domains.
• How to mitigate cyberattacks happening through the dark web.
• The dark web ecosystem with cutting edge areas like IoT, forensics, and threat intelligence and so on.
• The dark web-related research and applications and up-to-date on the latest technologies and research findings in this area.

For all present and aspiring cybersecurity professionals who want to upgrade their skills by understanding the concepts of the dark web, Inside the Dark Web is their one-stop guide to understanding the dark web and building a cybersecurity plan.

Chapter 1

Introduction to Cybersecurity and Dark Web

Introduction

The digital universe is huge, and the internet and World Wide Web (WWW) are much bigger than what we see through our regular browsing. The internet and its users are rapidly growing due to emerging applications of information technology (IT), and it is expected to continue to grow. However, the rapid growth of internet has left it susceptible to misuse and abuse which becomes significant threat and challenge in cyberspace around the globe. A big number of cybercriminals are trying to make illicit attempts every day to gain the access of unauthorized data through the internet. The majority of internet users are accessing the web through normal browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Apple Safari. The web accessed by a normal browser is called as surface web; however, a large part of the content remains hidden in the deep website. According to the literature, the modern search engines index only a very small part of the web, and a large amount of the web contents are concealed as it is in the deep website. The term dark web is part of the deep web which is targeted by the majority of cybercriminals, and they are doing criminal activities within the dark site of the web which is called dark net. This chapter will describe the following:

• Explanation of cybersecurity and cybercrime
• Web and its categories
• Dark web and its terminologies
• Origins of dark net
• Dark web software.

Cybersecurity and Cybercrime

The expansion of internet has created a great opportunity among the users in different domains, for instance, academic, government, business, and industry sectors. However, this growing development has also created the opportunity to exploit vulnerabilities to attack the infrastructure and system, conduct espionage, and wage cyberwar. Therefore, the cyberspace needs to ensure the users are secure so that they can protect their privacy and safety in the cyber world. The term cybersecurity has been adopted by government and industry, and is understood as the process by which computer networks and databases of national interest are protected, for example, large corporations and government agencies including civilian, military, and law enforcement.

Cybersecurity

The term cybersecurity, also known as computer security and IT security, refers to the technologies, processes, and practices to safeguard from unwanted access of software, hardware, data, program, and intellectual property by cybercriminals over the internet. It is also considered to control the physical access of hardware and/or cyber physical infrastructure. Cybersecurity also refers to protect data from exfiltration, various code injection attacks (CIA) such as SQL injection and XSS, or any type of service disruption.

According to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), cybersecurity is defined as

the collection of tools, policies, guidelines, risk management approaches, actions, training, best practices, assurance and technologies that can be used to protect the cyber environment and organization and user’s assets. Organization and user’s assets include connected computing devices, users, applications, services, telecommunications systems, and the totality of transmitted and/or stored information in the cyber environment. Cybersecurity ensures the attainment and maintenance of the security properties of the organization and user’s assets against relevant security risks in the cyber environment. The security properties include one or more of the following: availability, integrity, and confidentiality.

CIA (confidentiality, integrity, and availability) is the basic principles of cybersecurity. Confidentiality means that the information which is classified or sensitive must remain so and be shared only with appropriate users. Availability means that the information and systems must be available to those who need it. Integrity means that the information must retain its reliability and not be altered from its original state.

Cybersecurity includes different elements such as application security, information security, network security, and disaster recovery. Cybersecurity includes different activities and operations aiming at the reduction and prevention of threat and vulnerabilities and having in place policies for protection, incident response, recovery, data assurance, law enforcement, and military and intelligence operations relating to cyberspace security. It defends the systems from hacking and virus attacks.

Consequently, cybersecurity has had growing importance in the cyber world due to the increasing reliance on computer systems, smart devices, wireless networks such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and the growth of the internet. Cybersecurity involves protecting the information and systems we rely on every day—whether at home, office, or business.

Cybersecurity touches practically all activities and all citizens around the globe; it provides tremendous opportunities for enhancing human development as well as achieving better integration in the information society. It also supports wider access to knowledge and education, as well as to the development of policies and strategies.

In legal and regulatory institutions, the lack of cyberspace security undermines the realization of the full potential of the IT revolution. Consequently, special attention is needed to prevent cyberspace from turning into a source of danger for states and citizens, and to prevent the appearance of a cybercrime haven. The prevention of cybercrime is a key objective of cybersecurity.

Cybercrime

According to Interpol definition, the cybercrime refers as follows:

Cybercrime is a fast‐growing area of crime. More and more criminals are exploiting the speed, convenience, and anonymity of the Internet to commit a diverse range of criminal activities that know no borders, either physical or virtual

– Interpol

Cybercrime is used most often by social scientists and is understood as the process by which criminals target computers or use computers as tools in the commission of a crime. The emphasis is on the offender and the victim. This focus on individual criminals and offenders means an expansive exploration of both crimes, including romance scams, online fraud schemes, cyberbullying, and online extremism.

Cybercrime or computer crimes are “offences against confidentiality, integrity and availability of computer data and systems” and “computer-related offences,” not limited to computer-related forgery, intentional illegal computer system access, intentional illegal interception of computer data transmission, intentionally interfering with data without approval, systems interference, and misuses of electronic or computer devices.

Cybercrime costs billions of dollars to business during cyberattacks that cause direct damage and continue disrupting the business operations after the attack. Due to the financial loss and business disruption, there are more targeted efforts to control the attacks. In addition, why the efforts are becoming more targeted is because our consumer lives are mostly online and a significant portion of attacks are difficult to detect.

In recent years, the cybercrime efforts are increasingly becoming more targeted by means of the time and cost of performing an attack versus the payback.

According to Australian cybercrime online report, the term cybercrime refers to “crimes which are directed at computers or other devices, and where computers or other devices… are integral to the offence.” This definition broadly defines the types of activities performed by cybercriminals. Their operations either target specific computer networks by developing and deploying various forms of malicious software (such as viruses) or exploit these networks to further their own criminal agendas (phishing, identity theft, fraud, recruitment, etc.). The security experts are working hard to protect cyberspace from the growing cyberattacks including deliberate attempts. Therefore, cybersecurity is an important area that is needed to safeguard the details of internet users.

There has been a dramatic growth of malicious activities within the cyberspace. It is a major concern that thousands of new sophisticated malware and spam are released in an attempt to damage computer systems, or steal or destroy their data (Table 1.1).

Table 1.1 Differences between the Concepts of Cybersecurity and Cybercrime

Web and Its Levels

The term dark web is part of the WWW and known as invisible/hidden web. The content on the dark web remains hidden and cannot be searched through conventional search engines. The content only exists on personal encrypted networks or peer-to-peer configurations, and it is not indexed by typical search engines. Therefore, the large part of the internet that is inaccessible to conventional search engines is known as deep web (invisible web). Everyone who uses the web virtually visits what could be reflected as deep websites on a daily basis without being aware.

The deep web is the an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Authors
• Introduction
• 1 Introduction to Cybersecurity and Dark Web
• 2 Threat Landscape in Dark Net
• 3 Malicious Dark Net—Tor Network
• 4 Malware
• 5 Cybercriminal Activities in Dark Net
• 6 Evolution of the Web and Its Hidden Data
• 7 Dark Web Content Analyzing Techniques
• 8 Extracting Information from Dark Web Contents/Logs
• 9 Dark Web Forensics
• 10 Open Source Intelligence
• 11 Emerging Trends in the Dark Web and Mitigating Techniques
• Index