The Dark Side of the Internet

Girl: Baby, I’m ready to do anything for you!

Boy: Ok babe, lie down!

Girl: (Does exactly as she was told!)

Boy: I want to sleep with you. No, I don’t mean to have sex with you. I mean sleep. In your bed, while you lay on my arm with my other hand caressing your belly. The window is left half open, so it’s chilly and we’ll have to cuddle closer. No talking, just the muffled cries that you’ll make from your blood-gurgling mouth as I slit your throat and sacrifice your worthless self-being to the dark overlord.

(Kucch Jyada Nahi Ho Gaya? Wait till you first visit the “other” side of the Internet!)

The Internet

• The Surface Web: It includes openly available indexed sites that can be accessed by typing their URL in any search engine query box. This is just the tip of the Iceberg constituting only 4% of the Internet.
• The Deep Web: This part of the Internet holds almost 96% of the Internet which is not indexed by your regular search engines. Special access is required to get there as it underlay sensitive piece of information such as medical records, legal documents, government resources, etc.

a) The Dark Web: This is where nobody wants to see you! Neither the government organizations nor your parents but, you’ve been a naughty kid all your life so, who’s gonna stop you then?

What Constitutes the Dark Internet?

Drugs, guns, assassins, hackers, Botnets, illegal pornography are some of the “surface” examples to describe the dark web content.

But, if you go deep down into it, then, you’ll find it’s not all too bad. As it’s the only platform for the whistleblowers to raise their voices, “Robin Hood” hackers to bring back what was stolen from us and, the flourishing debate between Satanism and Godliness to take place.

(Hamza Bendelladj, an Algerian hacker, who robbed several US banks and distributed the money (close to $400 million) among the Palestinian activist organisations. This is him when he got arrested in Thailand)

All and all it’s a safe haven for the liberalization activists (Who are they? We know nothing about them as moral terrorism is yet to be famous), terrorists (the “real” terrorists as far as I know!), journalists (yeah, like the real ones!), etc.

How Can I Access the Dark Internet?

The term Dark Net is first coined during the late 70s, which however became famous only after the introduction of “Tor browser” in the year of 2004 under a general license category. The Tor browser was developed by the US Naval Research lab during the 2000th year of our Lord with the purpose of protecting U.S. intelligence communication online. (It’s still in the protecting mode but the “item-of-interest” has changed.) It currently is a non-profit organization and also a kingdom of knowledge by not telling the users what they can or can’t look for on the internet. (Not the stupidity of keywords here mates.)

Many people would say that it is rich in the illegal content section so, why doesn’t the government shut it down? I would remind them once again that it’s always the people uploading these “fine pieces of art” not the creators! So, just because someone is using it in the wrong manner, we can’t punish its creators. (Imagine Punishing Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar for making this country democratic!)

How Tor Conceals the Identity of its Users?

Tor lists (.onion) websites that are not-indexed by any other search engines. A dark net URL will look something like this:

Http://pwoah8foa6nu2pul.onion

(Where the domain name is always utter gibberish succeeded by a dot onion extension which can be accessed by Tor browser only.)

The client can obtain the list of Tor nodes from any directory server and can take any random path to get to the server which makes it almost impossible to trace back the thread’s original location. (Although, the FBI did stop a terrorist attack from happening by intercepting “peace talks” between Al-Qaida personnels on the darknet. How did that happen? I’ve absolutely no idea!)

Tor uses Bitcoins which is a digitally encrypted currency, making the transactions seems almost anonymous.

Some Facts about Tor Browser

• Getting someone killed has never been easy. You can hire “specialists” to kill an ordinary person for something like twenty thousand US Dollars. (Like Seriously! $20k is the actual worth of your life, and here, you’re thinking about a “bulletproof” billion dollar idea, how will it matter after your death?)
• All “good” things come out of the US only, and this one is just a brilliant example to depict the same. Almost 80% funding for Tor’s operations come from the US government.
• Edward Snowden, a former CIA agent and true nationalist, used the dark web to leak the classified information about the NSA’s mass surveillance programs. (And we thought God’s eye was fiction! Also, there is social media which is pretty much the same thing).

• The Silk Road, a black market site, made one thing exceptionally clear to everybody out there, which is to “live like a boss and die like a king” after making almost 1.2 Billion Dollar transactions before going down in flames.

The Conclusion

You’re suggested not to go wandering on the dark side of the Internet as it can make your personal details openly accessible to the vast universe that is just hungry for the sensitive information. There is one particular example of a guy who tried to expose the credit card fraudsters of the dark net and got rewarded by a gram of heroin and a bunch of SWAT guys at his door.

GCHQ (Govt. Communication Headquarters) and NSA have formed a joint operation cell to cut down on the illegal activity sites based on the report provided by an IBM security research group called X-Force.

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has started indexing sites that have their safe abode on the servers of the dark Internet. (Arduous task really but somebody has to do the job, right?)

So, until that happens, hands off the darkness as the world needs positivity, not the rebellion.