Cute-Piggy
Eternal Poster
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- Jun 12, 2019
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You may know of the dark web - and its multiple levels of content, which span all levels of legality - you probably don't know where it came from or how it grew into the digital presence it is today. Many dark web facts are hidden on the dark web itself, which is notoriously inaccessible to those without the means or familiarity to navigate it.
Uninitiated folks might think the dark web sprang up only a few years ago, but it's existed since the beginning of the internet. The dark web has evolved over the years, and no one entirely knows what it comprises today, but most understand it's a home for all sorts of illicit information.
As news pundits throw out terms like "cryptocurrency" and "intellectual dark web" with increasing frequency, awareness of these terms has spread, but that awareness doesn't always lead to understanding. The dark web is a strange place, and exploring each corner only reveals doors to even more obscure areas of the internet.
On October 29, 1969, a student at UCLA sent the first computer-to-computer electronic message. The system he used to transmit the message was called the ARPANET.
ARPANET was the precursor to the modern internet. It didn't take much time for people to set up "darknets" - or unlisted, covert networks that used the ARPANET framework.
Not only did darknets spring up very soon after the invention of the internet, but they also helped pioneer some of the online uses we take for granted today. For example, the first online purchase wasn't a book or video game - it was drugs
.
Beginning in the early 1970s, students at Stanford co-opted ARPANET for drug deals. The operation was relatively small, but the students used the internet to keep their dealings secretive and hidden.
During the 1980s, people found storing illicit or sensitive data increasingly difficult. The internet remained open, making transparency hard to avoid. To get around it, users attempted to create "data havens" where sensitive information could be stored far away from the prying eyes of authorities. It wasn't enough to isolate the information digitally; many users separated their data physically as well.
Many of these data havens existed on islands in the Caribbean, specifically Anguilla, and in many ways functioned identically to tax havens. Because the havens fell outside of any major country, different rules applied, and people could avoid certain laws.
In the latter half of the 1990s, compression algorithms improved greatly, allowing increased peer-to-peer file sharing. Users could easily share MP3s and other music files back and forth without much hassle. A few major sites that hosted this type of file sharing stayed above-ground, like Napster and LimeWire, but they were in the minority.
It was not permissible to s†éál music and give it to other people for free, so many of these services went unindexed on the dark web. Today, almost all of these services exist entirely on the dark web, to both avoid litigation and preserve anonymity.
In 2000, an Irish software developer named Ian Clarke released a new web browser called Freenet as part of his college thesis. Unlike browsers such as Internet Explorer, Freenet allows users to browse the internet in complete anonymity. They become entirely untraceable.
Freenet also indexes several websites found on the dark web that would otherwise be impossible to discover. It gives users access to all sorts of îllégâl and sensitive content, while providing identity protection to avoid repercussions from authorities. The federal government soon began using the Freenet browser to look for this same content and shut it down.
In 2000, Ryan Lackey and Sean Hastings decided to create a self-sufficient data haven. They set up shop on Sealand, an old sea fort off the British coast left over from World War II. The idea was to build servers into the fort's legs and store tons of data away from prying eyes. They called the company HavenCo.
Though it did ban certain types of content, HavenCo allowed for a lot of freedom. But HavenCo never took off as a financial success, especially after Sealand nationalized it. Today, it's almost entirely ceased operations, though its legacy lives on in a famous Wired article.
During the '90s, a branch of the US Naval Research Laboratory devised a new browser system that hid users' IP addresses, which made law enforcement and undercover operatives less traceable on the web. But others on the web soon learned only law enforcement used the network, negating its original purpose.
So on September 20, 2002, the lab released The Onion Router, or TOR, for the masses. Very quickly, TOR attracted people who wanted to use it for îllégâl purposes. It became one of the top ways to go online and purchase or view all sorts of illicit content, even though the US government created it.
On November 18, 2002, at a major security conference, four Microsoft engineers claimed it would eventually be impossible to protect copyrighted content from theft. They also released a paper on their findings titled "The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution."
They theorized that as technology improved, information would spread more easily. Once a piece of data hit the dark web, the engineers believed, stopping people from sharing and downloading it would be impossible. At the time, they were almost fired for their work, but they turned out to be right.
In 2005, the tech-focused magazine Wired released a highly influential article about the deep web. Thanks to faster internet speeds and greater storage, around half a million movies were being illegally downloaded every single day. And it wasn't just Hollywood movies and music - users stole and pirated entire software programs and suites like Microsoft Office.
According to a study from the Business Software Alliance, companies worldwide lost $34 billion to pirates in 2005. The US alone lost $6.9 billion just from software theft.
The first appearance of bitcoin traces back to 2008, when an individual known as Satoshi Nakamoto released a document detailing the idea of bitcoin. By January 3, 2009, the first bitcoin hit the market. Although other cryptocurrencies existed before then, they all failed because they were impossible to protect.
Before bitcoin, people could copy your money and then "double spend" it anywhere. Bitcoin differed because it was untraceable and impossible to duplicate. As such, it quickly became a standard for dark web activities, including buying drugs and laundering money.
On June 1, 2011, a Gawker article illuminated the existence of a website called Silk Road, which acted as an online marketplace where people shopped for their drug of choice. To use the site, users needed a TOR connection and bitcoin for payment.
The exposé ended up boosting traffic to the site and significantly raised the value of bitcoin. But authorities, too, started paying a great deal of attention to Silk Road.
In the late 2000s and early 2010s, publications began explaining the distinction between the dark web and the deep web. Whereas the deep web encompasses any part of the internet inaccessible by typical browsers or search engines like Google, the dark web consists of specific sites that wish to avoid detection.
Users of the dark web want to remain anonymous. As such, they tend to be people who want to access îllégâl or sensitive information. On the dark web, people buy drugs, plot terrorist attacks, or distribute îllégâl sexual material without fear of repercussion. Others who use it include political dissidents and journalists in repressive regimes.
In August 2013, Irish police captured Eric Eoin Marques, whom the FBI called "the largest facilitator of child **** on the planet." After his arrest, other areas of the dark web went down, implying Marques's involvement with maintaining massive sections of the dark web's ãdül† sites. The bust was significant as well because it likely happened due to authorities finding a way to penetrate the anonymity of TOR.
Just a few days after Eric Eoin Marques's arrest in 2013, terrorist communications shared by Al Qaeda operatives ended up in the hands of US intelligence officers, leading the US to temporarily close 22 embassies and consulates in the Middle East and Northern Africa.
Terrorists increasingly began to communicate using a sophisticated version of the dark web. By 2013, authorities were learning terrorists coordinated many attacks through the dark web.
October 1, 2013, marked the end of Silk Road - the first version, at least. Federal authorities arrested Ross Ulbricht, whom they charged with creating the site. But the shutdown led to an uptick in similar drug-related websites. Within a month, Silk Road 2.0 launched to take the place of the former website, though it too was shut down in 2014.
In 2016, a study titled "Cryptopolitik and the Darknet" from researchers at King's College London found that websites on the dark web are most commonly used for criminal activities. They discovered 5,205 TOR websites and were able to classify the content for 2,723 of those, finding that 1,547 (57%) offered illicit information and services.
These included money laundering, firearm sales, counterfeit currency, stolen credit cards, sales of prescription and îllégâl drugs, häçking, violence such as hit men for hire, and ãdül† material involving violence, children, and animals.
Also in 2016, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime released its World Drug Report, which found that the number of drug users who purchased drugs illegally on the dark web was increasing.
As people continue to use the dark web, the need for and value of cryptocurrencies continue to grow. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies such as Monero and Litecoin provide less-traceable payment sources, allowing buyers and sellers to more easily get away with îllégâl activity undetected.
The dark web and cryptocurrency appear to benefit each other. Consider ransomware, for example: When a computer gets locked out, häçkers ask for cryptocurrency in exchange. As long as the dark web continues to exist, cryptocurrency will likely also remain.
By Jordan Breeding
Uninitiated folks might think the dark web sprang up only a few years ago, but it's existed since the beginning of the internet. The dark web has evolved over the years, and no one entirely knows what it comprises today, but most understand it's a home for all sorts of illicit information.
As news pundits throw out terms like "cryptocurrency" and "intellectual dark web" with increasing frequency, awareness of these terms has spread, but that awareness doesn't always lead to understanding. The dark web is a strange place, and exploring each corner only reveals doors to even more obscure areas of the internet.
On October 29, 1969, a student at UCLA sent the first computer-to-computer electronic message. The system he used to transmit the message was called the ARPANET.
ARPANET was the precursor to the modern internet. It didn't take much time for people to set up "darknets" - or unlisted, covert networks that used the ARPANET framework.
Not only did darknets spring up very soon after the invention of the internet, but they also helped pioneer some of the online uses we take for granted today. For example, the first online purchase wasn't a book or video game - it was drugs
.
Beginning in the early 1970s, students at Stanford co-opted ARPANET for drug deals. The operation was relatively small, but the students used the internet to keep their dealings secretive and hidden.
During the 1980s, people found storing illicit or sensitive data increasingly difficult. The internet remained open, making transparency hard to avoid. To get around it, users attempted to create "data havens" where sensitive information could be stored far away from the prying eyes of authorities. It wasn't enough to isolate the information digitally; many users separated their data physically as well.
Many of these data havens existed on islands in the Caribbean, specifically Anguilla, and in many ways functioned identically to tax havens. Because the havens fell outside of any major country, different rules applied, and people could avoid certain laws.
In the latter half of the 1990s, compression algorithms improved greatly, allowing increased peer-to-peer file sharing. Users could easily share MP3s and other music files back and forth without much hassle. A few major sites that hosted this type of file sharing stayed above-ground, like Napster and LimeWire, but they were in the minority.
It was not permissible to s†éál music and give it to other people for free, so many of these services went unindexed on the dark web. Today, almost all of these services exist entirely on the dark web, to both avoid litigation and preserve anonymity.
In 2000, an Irish software developer named Ian Clarke released a new web browser called Freenet as part of his college thesis. Unlike browsers such as Internet Explorer, Freenet allows users to browse the internet in complete anonymity. They become entirely untraceable.
Freenet also indexes several websites found on the dark web that would otherwise be impossible to discover. It gives users access to all sorts of îllégâl and sensitive content, while providing identity protection to avoid repercussions from authorities. The federal government soon began using the Freenet browser to look for this same content and shut it down.
In 2000, Ryan Lackey and Sean Hastings decided to create a self-sufficient data haven. They set up shop on Sealand, an old sea fort off the British coast left over from World War II. The idea was to build servers into the fort's legs and store tons of data away from prying eyes. They called the company HavenCo.
Though it did ban certain types of content, HavenCo allowed for a lot of freedom. But HavenCo never took off as a financial success, especially after Sealand nationalized it. Today, it's almost entirely ceased operations, though its legacy lives on in a famous Wired article.
During the '90s, a branch of the US Naval Research Laboratory devised a new browser system that hid users' IP addresses, which made law enforcement and undercover operatives less traceable on the web. But others on the web soon learned only law enforcement used the network, negating its original purpose.
So on September 20, 2002, the lab released The Onion Router, or TOR, for the masses. Very quickly, TOR attracted people who wanted to use it for îllégâl purposes. It became one of the top ways to go online and purchase or view all sorts of illicit content, even though the US government created it.
On November 18, 2002, at a major security conference, four Microsoft engineers claimed it would eventually be impossible to protect copyrighted content from theft. They also released a paper on their findings titled "The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution."
They theorized that as technology improved, information would spread more easily. Once a piece of data hit the dark web, the engineers believed, stopping people from sharing and downloading it would be impossible. At the time, they were almost fired for their work, but they turned out to be right.
In 2005, the tech-focused magazine Wired released a highly influential article about the deep web. Thanks to faster internet speeds and greater storage, around half a million movies were being illegally downloaded every single day. And it wasn't just Hollywood movies and music - users stole and pirated entire software programs and suites like Microsoft Office.
According to a study from the Business Software Alliance, companies worldwide lost $34 billion to pirates in 2005. The US alone lost $6.9 billion just from software theft.
The first appearance of bitcoin traces back to 2008, when an individual known as Satoshi Nakamoto released a document detailing the idea of bitcoin. By January 3, 2009, the first bitcoin hit the market. Although other cryptocurrencies existed before then, they all failed because they were impossible to protect.
Before bitcoin, people could copy your money and then "double spend" it anywhere. Bitcoin differed because it was untraceable and impossible to duplicate. As such, it quickly became a standard for dark web activities, including buying drugs and laundering money.
On June 1, 2011, a Gawker article illuminated the existence of a website called Silk Road, which acted as an online marketplace where people shopped for their drug of choice. To use the site, users needed a TOR connection and bitcoin for payment.
The exposé ended up boosting traffic to the site and significantly raised the value of bitcoin. But authorities, too, started paying a great deal of attention to Silk Road.
In the late 2000s and early 2010s, publications began explaining the distinction between the dark web and the deep web. Whereas the deep web encompasses any part of the internet inaccessible by typical browsers or search engines like Google, the dark web consists of specific sites that wish to avoid detection.
Users of the dark web want to remain anonymous. As such, they tend to be people who want to access îllégâl or sensitive information. On the dark web, people buy drugs, plot terrorist attacks, or distribute îllégâl sexual material without fear of repercussion. Others who use it include political dissidents and journalists in repressive regimes.
In August 2013, Irish police captured Eric Eoin Marques, whom the FBI called "the largest facilitator of child **** on the planet." After his arrest, other areas of the dark web went down, implying Marques's involvement with maintaining massive sections of the dark web's ãdül† sites. The bust was significant as well because it likely happened due to authorities finding a way to penetrate the anonymity of TOR.
Just a few days after Eric Eoin Marques's arrest in 2013, terrorist communications shared by Al Qaeda operatives ended up in the hands of US intelligence officers, leading the US to temporarily close 22 embassies and consulates in the Middle East and Northern Africa.
Terrorists increasingly began to communicate using a sophisticated version of the dark web. By 2013, authorities were learning terrorists coordinated many attacks through the dark web.
October 1, 2013, marked the end of Silk Road - the first version, at least. Federal authorities arrested Ross Ulbricht, whom they charged with creating the site. But the shutdown led to an uptick in similar drug-related websites. Within a month, Silk Road 2.0 launched to take the place of the former website, though it too was shut down in 2014.
In 2016, a study titled "Cryptopolitik and the Darknet" from researchers at King's College London found that websites on the dark web are most commonly used for criminal activities. They discovered 5,205 TOR websites and were able to classify the content for 2,723 of those, finding that 1,547 (57%) offered illicit information and services.
These included money laundering, firearm sales, counterfeit currency, stolen credit cards, sales of prescription and îllégâl drugs, häçking, violence such as hit men for hire, and ãdül† material involving violence, children, and animals.
Also in 2016, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime released its World Drug Report, which found that the number of drug users who purchased drugs illegally on the dark web was increasing.
As people continue to use the dark web, the need for and value of cryptocurrencies continue to grow. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies such as Monero and Litecoin provide less-traceable payment sources, allowing buyers and sellers to more easily get away with îllégâl activity undetected.
The dark web and cryptocurrency appear to benefit each other. Consider ransomware, for example: When a computer gets locked out, häçkers ask for cryptocurrency in exchange. As long as the dark web continues to exist, cryptocurrency will likely also remain.
By Jordan Breeding
