New Sites to Explore in Deep Web

New Sites To Explore

Reddit user NekroTor is on a quest to reboot many of the Freedom Hosting sites that were taken down. On February 16th of this year, on his onion-routed blog, Nekrotown, he wrote, "2 days ago the BlackMarket Reloaded forum got seized. On the same day, the long-awaited Utopia Market was seized, which just goes to show that all the markets fucking suck these days except for Agora and TMP, and that you should just wait until BlackMarket Reloaded opens up again... eventually ...5 years later, no BMR."
NekroTor is correct in writing that most of the content right now on the Dark Web is not that great. On top of the fact that there used to be a wealth of sites for illegal black market interactions, there also used to be radio, books, blogs, political conversations, and even an Encyclopedia Dramatica that was a satirical culture-based wiki and is now laden with porn and pop-ups.
NekroTor created a new version of Hidden Wiki that has some functional links to audio and video streaming as well as some up-to-date forums for socializing and buying and selling. There are still a few image boards left, but the popular Onii-chan has the words "Well be back later" typed over spinning dildos.

Redditors Who Are Reaching Out For Deep Web Direction

After watching House of Cards, user TrelianScar turned to Reddit for guidance on how to navigate the Dark Web. TrelianScar is not alone. The Deep Web is making appearances in the media, in dinner conversations, and of course on Internet forums. One user jokingly writes to TrelianScar saying, "Wait till we send you an iPad. Then talk to the Dutch oil painting. Then await instructions," referencing HOC's unrealistic depiction of Deep Web interactions.
On a more serious note though, user Serbia_Strong writes, "What are you looking for first of all? Drugs? Guns? Assassins? Credit cards or counterfeit cash? I'd start your journey at the Hidden Wiki and then narrow in on your interests. I pretty much save every site I come across (you can't exactly just google them). Start at The Hidden Wiki and if you need any links just ask. Enjoy your descent into madness :)"
Another user, Dexter-Del-Rey explained a similar conundrum last week—he too is new to the Deep Web and wants some functional starter links. Redditor Ampernand writes back saying, "On the topic of torchan... here's a good piece on how it fell authored by the previous host. Currently torchan is hosted by someone that allows cp, gore etc, censors critics and doesn't give a flying fuck about the community. Effectively torchan has become exactly what it was trying to not be. Also, nntpchan is better." Ampernand links to NNTP-chan, which is a new forum replacing the image board Onii-chan.
New channels are popping up daily in the Deep Web. Currently, marketplace alternatives to Silk Road, Agora, and Pandora are the most frequented. Nonetheless, both TrelianScar and Dexter-Del-Rey were each respectively warned in their threads that the Dark Web is chock-full of scammers and is quite unlike its Hollywood depiction.
Interestingly, the Deep Web has lost much of its stigma over the past year and mainstream web services are experimenting with the platform even if they're not embracing it. In late October 2014, Facebook enabled Tor browser users to visit them anonymously, saying in a press release that "It’s important to us at Facebook to provide methods for people to use our site securely."

An Up-To-Date Layman's Guide To Accessing The Deep Web

If you binge-watched the second season of House of Cards, along with a reported 15% of Netflix's 44 million subscribers, you may be newly interested in the Deep Web. Slate has done a good job of describing what the Deep Web is and isn't, but they don't tell you how to get there.

How To Access The Deep Web

First: the hot sheets. Subreddit forums for DeepWeb, onions, and Tor are the way to go in terms of gathering a backgrounder for entry points into DarkNet. Unsurprisingly though, much of the information currently on the surface Internet about the actual underbelly of the web is outdated. Ever since Silk Road's takedown last year, the Under-web has been changing.
To get into the Deep Web these days, you first have to download the Tor add-on for Firefox. By downloading the Tor Browser Bundle from the Tor Project you are securing your anonymity to browse, which is the main draw for using Tor. Once you have downloaded the browser bundle, Tor builds a circuit of encrypted connections through a randomized relay. In layman's terms that means that your online activity is covered as Tor randomly pings your IP address from one place to the other, making whatever you do less traceable.

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Multiple Redditors urge reading the Tor Project's warning page, where they discourage torrent file sharing and downloading while using Tor. The idea is to follow protocol maintaining your anonymity while browsing, chatting, or navigating. This obviously includes giving away your personal information like email addresses, phone numbers, names, time zones, or home addresses in any context.

The newest iteration of the Tor browser, Tor 4.0, was released in October 2014. It contains a variety of product tweaks designed primarily to enable use behind China's massive Internet firewall.
Other precautions include placing duct tape on your webcam, enabling your computer's firewall, and turning off cookies and JavaScript. Again, here is where you want to be completely free of an identity, so treading cautiously is key. The NSA and other government outlets peruse the Dark Web and onion sites frequently using cross-reference tools, malware, and remote administration tools to de-anonymize users engaging in illegal activity.
While the Deep Web houses the retail of weapons, drugs, and illicit erotica, there are also useful tools for journalists, researchers, or thrill seekers. It's also worth noting that mere access through Tor is not illegal but can arouse suspicion with the law. Illegal transactions usually begin on the Deep Web but those transactions quite often head elsewhere for retail, private dialoguing, or in-person meetups; that's how most people get caught by law enforcement officials.
For mobile users, several browsers exist which purport to—more or less—allow Tor to be used on an Android or iOS device. These browsers include OrWeb, Anonymous Browser Connect Tor, the mobile Firefox add-on, Onion Browser, and Red Onion. However, it is important to note that security concerns have been raised for all of these browsers and that anonymous browsing cannot be 100% guaranteed for any of these.

Where To Go Once You're On The Inside

After reading up on the material, downloading Tor, and logging out of every other application, you can finally open Tor's Browser Bundle to begin secure navigation. Network navigation is slow once you are inside because of the running relay, so expect pages to load at a snail's pace.
The most common suggestion on Reddit is to start at the "Hidden Wiki." The Hidden Wiki has a similar interface as Wikipedia and lists by category different sites to access depending on your interest. Categories include: Introduction Points, News/History, Commercial Services, Forums/Boards/Chans, and H/P/A/W/V/C (Hack, Phreak, Anarchy, Warez, Virus, Crack) just to name a few. Under each of these headings are multiple sites with an onion address and a brief description of what you will find there.
Many of the listed sites on the Hidden Wiki though have been taken down. Deep Web Tor, Tor Jump, Tor Answers, and Tor.info were all busts. When the feds took down Silk Road, many other sites also fell victim and/or are currently down for maintenance. Still, gun, drug, and child porn marketplaces operate even though they are on much smaller scales and with a fraction of the reach than that of Silk Road or Atlantis, another drug-peddling site.
Some pages are less nefarious, but arouse your curiosity nonetheless. StaTors.Net is the Twitter for Tor users and Hell Online is the antisocial network with 369 members and 15 different groups. Torchan resembles Reddit, though you need to enter the username and password torchan2 for access, and is still up and running. But recent activity except in Request and Random rooms has all but stopped.

In the Random room a user asked for a new link to Silk Road and the responses were limited. Another user posting an image of a child fully clothed featuring bare feet pleading for a site featuring underage bare feet. An Anonymous user responded: "Someone please give this guy a link, this poor guy has been looking/asking for over a month now."
One popular chat service is OnionChat, an anonymous Tor-based real-time chat room quasi-affiliated with the Onions subreddit. The project's code is available on GitHub as well.
The DeepWeb Link Directory in the site OnionDir had some promising hyperlinks and some not-so-promising ones like the now defunct Deep Web Radio and a blog claiming to be a Deep Web blog but was actually just stories dedicated to spanking.

The New Yorker Strongbox is a secure transmission for writers and editors where I was given the code name: riddle yeah abreacts murgeoning. Through a given codename you can submit a message and/or file to the New Yorker's editorial staff. Mike Tigas, a news application developer for ProPublica, has a functioning blog in the Deep Web but has not posted anything new for some time, which was true for many other blogs as well

Digging Below the Surface

Fortunately, you can uncover this wealth of information by using specialized tools designed to mine databases. For instance, let's say you want to buy a used copy of "Alice in Wonderland." How would you find it? Searching on eBay or Amazon.com--essentially querying their databases--will be more fruitful than using Yahoo! or Google. The same goes for job hunting. Since job postings are stored in a database, most search engines can't find them; searching sites like Craigslist or Monster is a better way to go.
The secret to successful searching is to understand what you want to know, and then using the right Web resource to find it. Ask yourself these questions:

• Is the information time-sensitive, such as stock quotes or newspaper articles?
• Are you looking for a photo or a video clip?
• Do you want to find an MP3 music file or listen to a podcast?
• Are you searching for specific types of content, such as blogs?

If the answer is "yes," then try using the tools listed in the chart below. And when you find ones that you like, be sure to bookmark them for future use.

Tools for Mining the Deep Web
To find...	Try using...
Audio and Music Files	FindSounds Yahoo! Music
Blogs	Google Blog Search IceRocket Technorati
Databases	Complete Planet
News	AlltheWeb: News AltaVista: News NewsNow Pandia Newsfinder The WorldNews Network
Newsgroup & Groups	Google Groups
Photos and Graphic Images	AllTheWeb: Pictures AltaVista Google Images Picsearch
Podcasts	Podcast.com Podcast Directory.com
RSS feeds	Feedage Syndic8.com
Sound Effects	FindSounds.com
Video	AOL Video Search Truveo Yahoo! Video Search

Mining the Deep Web

Although search engines like Yahoo!, Bing and Google index billions of web pages and other electronic documents, this represents only a tiny part of the total information available on the World Wide Web. To unearth the buried treasure, you have to understand how to mine the data.
Two Layers of Data Think of the Web as having two layers: a shallow surface and an almost bottomless, deep level. In the top layer, the Surface Web, you will find all the web pages like the one that you're now reading. This page and others like it have fixed web addresses or URLs (in this case, http://www.learnthenet.com/how-to/search-the-deep-web). Also, the information contained in the page doesn't change very often.

It's True

According to some studies, the amount of information in the Deep Web is estimated to be 500 times greater than in the Surface Web.

The Deep Web contains pages with dynamic content--data that changes frequently and can't be indexed easily by search engines. Most of this information is stored in databases and is assembled "on the fly" when you query the database. For instance, when you search for an item on eBay, information is pulled from eBay's database and instantly assembled on a web page for you. That page did not exist until you performed your search, which is what makes it dynamic; it was customized in response to your query. Because of this fact, search engines can't readily index this information.
Other types of "deep" information include:

• Multimedia (audio, music and video)
• Photos and graphics
• Job listings
• Financial data (stock and bond prices, currency rates)
• News
• Travel-related data (airline and train schedules)
• Information on sites that require passwords

NSF's DarkWeb Life imitates Art

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is funding the University of Arizona in developing a project they call the Dark Web to track down terrorists on the net.
When I read the NSF press release that my friend Randy A. pointed out to me, I could have sworn some of it was describing chapters of The Dark Net.


"They can put booby-traps in their Web forums," Chen explains, "and the spider can bring back viruses to our machines." This online cat-and-mouse game means Dark Web must be constantly vigilant against these and other counter-measures deployed by the terrorists.

Dark Web's capabilities are also being used to study the online presence of extremist groups and other social movement organizations. Chen sees applications for this Web mining approach for other academic fields.

"What we are doing is using this to study societal change," Chen says. "Evidence of this change is appearing online, and computational science can help other disciplines better understand this change."

Cyber Attack blows up a Generator

CNN is reporting that the Department of Homeland Security managed to blow up an electrical generator in a simulated cyber attack. It's a vivid demonstration of how the growing dependence on networked control systems links virtual world actions with real world effects.

This shouldn't really surprise anyone. Power grids are already too complex and interconnected to be controlled in any way other than by remote networked systems. Heck, pilots don't really fly jets much anymore - they just use the stick to tell the computer to take the plane in a particular direction. In fact, I doubt planes will even have pilots in 50 years, they'll be just like the automated trams that already haul people around on the ground at airports.

I can currently monitor my home through a web cam, and it won't be long before I have the ability to turn on the lights remotely and crank the air conditioning or heat from the office so things will be nice an comfy when I get home. Someday, I imagine someone could hack my house and do all sorts of annoying things. And if someone were to hack a plane, train, hydroelectric plant, or a nuclear power plant, things could get bad pretty quick.

The experts in the CNN story say that "a lot of the risk has already been taken off the table, " by finding ways to prevent the transformer hacks, but that it could take months to fix them all. That means our power grids are suffering from a classic zero day vulnerability. That is, the powers-that-be have publicly pointed out the flaw and announced fix, but anyone with the motivation has plenty of time to find unprotected systems to attack.

An expert interviewed on CNN claims that shutting down power to 1/3 of the country would have the economic and social devastation comparable to the nation being simultaneously hit by 40-50 major hurricanes.

Will there be an attack? Probably not. On the other hand, this is just one vulnerability. No doubt every networked machine or system, just like every networked computer, will eventually face similar threats.

Dark Net turns deadly in Japan

The Japanese news site Daily Yomiuri is reporting that a woman was murdered in a robbery concocted with the aid of dark Web sites set up to help criminals find accomplices.

Kenji Kawagishi, and unemployed 40 year-old man in Aichi Prefecture, sent messages from his cell phone to the "Dark Employment Security Web," which hooked him up with two other men who were also hard-up for cash. Tsukasa Kanda, a 36 year-old sales agent for the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, and Yoshitomo Hori, an unemployed man of 32, joined with Kawagishi in kidnapping Rie Isogai while she was on her way home from work. The men robbed her of 70,000 yen (about $600), murdered her and dumper her in the woods of Mizunami, Gifu Prefecture.

The Dark Employment Security Web has been closed, but the Japanese authorities say there's no way to know how many more are out there. Although the police shut them down as soon as they learn of the criminal equivalents of MySpace, new sites replace the deleted ones almost immediately.

Computing with Heat

 Researchers in Singapore have shown, in principle at least, that it will soon be possible to create thermal logic gates, including AND, OR, and NOT gates. Once you have all those pieces, you've got the basic ingredients of a computer that runs directly on heat, with no need for electricity at all.

Lei Wang and Baowen Li of the National University of Singapore propose that their logic gates could soon be built of recently developed thermal transistors or related designs, which control heat flow in the same way that conventional transistors control electricity.

A thermal transistor turns on or off depending on whether the temperature at its input gate is above or below a critical temperature. Constant temperature heat baths would take the place of power supplies in operating the thermal transistors and logic gates. In theory, any heat source could be used to run a thermal computer - sunlight, the heat from a campfire, etc.

In addition to proving that thermal gates can perform all the basic functions of electronic gates, the authors of the research soon to be published in the journal Physical Review Letters point out that the work may also help us to understand the complex heat flow in biological cells and systems in terms of thermal logic.

To get a look at the research before it's officially published, you can download a preprint of paper from the online science archives.

The World's Most Sophisticated Malware Ever Infects Hard Drive Firmware

High-tech "Equation group" is likely connected to NSA

 

 here's a new malware king on the block. Security researchers at Moscow-based Kaspersky Labs have uncovered a sophisticated suite of software packages that stem from what it calls the "Equation" group, a single cluster of unidentified hackers dating back to 2001.
A few things point to involvement by the U.S. intelligence apparatus: the complexity of the software; the groups and organizations targeted by the code; and similarities with known malware like Regin, Stuxnet, and software mentioned in documents from Edward Snowden. It's most likely the work of the National Security Agency (NSA), but Kaspersky doesn't explicitly draw that connection.

The malware can rewrite the firmware of hard drives--i.e. the very software that controls a device--making it virtually impossible to detect, let alone remove.

What makes Equation's work so impressive is the lengths to which it will go to infect target computers. In a never-before-seen capability, its malware can rewrite the firmware of hard drives--i.e. the software on the devices that controls them--making it virtually impossible to detect, let alone remove. Such an exploit would require access to private source code from hard-drive makers, though several of those companies denied to Reuters any knowledge or involvement.
The Equation group might also use a technique called "interdiction," in which they intercept mailed goods and replace them with infected versions; in one instance, Kaspersky learned CDs mailed to attendees of a scientific conference were replaced with versions containing one of Equation's Trojan horse programs.
The news has the feel of some dark web, Big Brother-esque conspiracy, but does this directly impact you, the average computer user? Probably not. For one thing, the Equation group's software appears to be highly targeted. It uses what's called an "escalation model:" a Trojan horse first determines whether or not the target is of interest before installing more invasive software. Much of the malware is also designed to self-destruct after a period of inactivity--no doubt intended to cover its tracks. But in one particular exploit of an online forum, Equation's exploit went out of its way not to track or infect unregistered users, targeting only those who were logged in.
Even if you are concerned about being infected by the Equation group's malware, there's little to be done about it at present. The software is so sophisticated that techniques to remove it don't yet exist--but we expect Kaspersky and other vendors will work to identify those methods.

Most Of The Web Is Invisible To Google. Here's What It Contains

You thought you knew the Internet. But sites such as Facebook, Amazon, and Instagram are just the surface. There’s a whole other world out there: the Deep Web.
It’s a place where online information is password protected, trapped behind paywalls, or requires special software to access—and it’s massive. By some estimates, it is 500 times larger than the surface Web that most people search every day. Yet it’s almost completely out of sight. According to a study published in Nature, Google indexes no more than 16 percent of the surface Web and misses all of the Deep Web. Any given search turns up just 0.03 percent of the information that exists online (one in 3,000 pages). It’s like fishing in the top two feet of the ocean—you miss the virtual Mariana Trench below.
Much of the Deep Web’s unindexed material lies in mundane data­bases such as LexisNexis or the rolls of the U.S. Patent Office. But like a Russian matryoshka doll, the Deep Web contains a further hidden world, a smaller but significant community where malicious actors unite in common purpose for ill. Welcome to the Dark Web, sometimes called the Darknet, a vast digital underground where hackers, gangsters, terrorists, and pedophiles come to ply their trade. What follows is but a cursory sampling of the goods and services available from within the darkest recesses of the Internet.

Things You Can Buy

1. Drugs
Individual or dealer-level quantities of illicit and prescription drugs of every type are available in the digital underground. The Silk Road, the now-shuttered drug superstore, did $200 million of business in 28 months.
2. Counterfeit Currency
Fake money varies widely in quality and cost, but euros, pounds, and yen are all available. Six hundred dollars gets you $2,500 in counterfeit U.S. notes, promised to pass the typical pen and ultraviolet-light tests.
3. Forged Papers
Passports, driver’s licenses, citizenship papers, fake IDs, college diplomas, immigration documents, and even diplomatic ID cards are available on illicit marketplaces such as Onion Identity Services. A U.S. driver’s license costs approximately $200, while passports from the U.S. or U.K. sell for a few thousand bucks.
4. Firearms, Ammunition, and Explosives
Weapons such as handguns and C4 explosives are procurable on the Dark Web. Vendors ship their products in specially shielded packages to avoid x-rays or send weapons components hidden in toys, musical instruments, or electronics.
5. Hitmen
Service providers—including a firm named for the H.P. Lovecraft monster C’thulhu—advertise “permanent solutions to common problems.” For everything from private grudges to political assassinations, these hired guns accept bitcoin as payment and provide photographic proof of the deed.
6. Human Organs
In the darker corners of the Dark Web, a vibrant and gruesome black market for live organs thrives. Kidneys may fetch $200,000, hearts $120,000, livers $150,000, and a pair of eyeballs $1,500.

Things That Make Internet Crime Work

1. Cryptocurrency
Digital cash, such as bitcoin and darkcoin, and the payment system Liberty Reserve provide a convenient system for users to spend money online while keeping their real-world identities hidden.
2. Bulletproof Web-hosting Services
Some Web hosts in places such as Russia or Ukraine welcome all content, make no attempts to learn their customers’ true identities, accept anonymous payments in bitcoin, and routinely ignore subpoena requests from law enforcement.

Bitcoins

via BitcoinTalk

Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin help keep the deep web in business.

3. Cloud Computing
By hosting their criminal malware with reputable firms, hackers are much less likely to see their traffic blocked by security systems. A recent study suggested that 16 percent of the world’s malware and cyberattack distribution channels originated in the Amazon Cloud.
4. Crimeware
Less skilled criminals can buy all the tools they need to identify system vulnerabilities, commit identity theft, compromise servers, and steal data. It was a hacker with just such a tool kit who invaded Target’s point-of-sale system in 2013.
5. Hackers For Hire
Organized cybercrime syndicates outsource hackers-for-hire. China's Hidden Lynx group boasts up to 100 professional cyberthieves, some of whom are known to have penetrated systems at Google, Adobe, and Lockheed Martin.
6. Multilingual Crime Call Centers
Employees will play any duplicitous role you would like, such as providing job and educational references, initiating wire transfers, and unblocking hacked accounts. Calls cost around $10.

How to Access the Dark Web’s Wares

Anonymizing Browser
Tor—short for The Onion Router—is one of several software programs that provide a gateway to the Dark Web. Tor reroutes signals across 6,000 servers to hide a page request’s origin, making clicks on illicit material nearly impossible for law enforcement to trace. It uses secret pages with .onion suffixes—rather than .com—which are only accessible with a Tor browser.
Secret Search Engines
In mid-2014, a hacker created Grams, the Dark Web’s first distributed search engine. Grams allows would-be criminals to search for drugs, guns, and stolen bank accounts across multiple hidden sites. It even includes an "I’m Feeling Lucky" button and targeted ads where drug dealers compete for clicks.

Criminal Wikis
Carefully organized wikis list hidden sites by category, such as Hacks, Markets, Viruses, and Drugs. Descriptions of each link help curious newcomers find their desired illicit items.
Hidden Chatrooms
Just as in the real world, online criminals looking to obtain the most felonious material must be vouched for before they can transact. A network of invitation-only chatrooms and forums, hidden behind unlisted alphanumeric Web addresses, provides access to the most criminal of circles.
This article was adapted from Marc Goodman’s book Future Crimes, which was published in February. It originally appeared in the April 2015 issue of Popular Science, under the title "The Dark Web Revealed.” All text © 2015 Marc Goodman, published by arrangement with Doubleday, an imprint of The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.