"Have you heard of the dark web?"
When I threw this question to different groups of people and got almost all of them answered in the affirmative, I realized that this may be the first time that the dark web has been so widely recognized by the whole society, even if it is over fifty years old, it is no longer so unconcerned when facing this problem.
The dark web, a term originally confined to the IT industry and some illegal business groups, was known to the public for the first time in 2017 because of the murder of Chinese scholar Zhang Yingying, who visited the United States. For most people, the dark web is a terrible place, and it even leads to crime to some extent.
We will not discuss whether a harmonious society will be achieved when everyone reads the fairy tale "The prince and the princess/Cinderella finally live happily together". However, this article tries to tell you what the nature of the dark web is, and whether he is really so terrible.
What is the relationship between the dark web, the deep web, and the Internet?
Today, everyone is online, and most of the time we say "Internet" and "Internet" refer to the connection to the Internet, which began in 1969 with the Arpa Network in the United States, which is now the Internet.
The dark web is different from the deep web
But if you search for "dark web" as a keyword on Wikipedia, it's specifically labeled "Hint: The subject of this article is not the deep web." "It shows that the dark web is distinctly different from the deep web, and this is confused by many people: the dark web and the deep web are not just one concept.
The dark web and the deep web are actually translated from English, the dark web is darknet or dark web; the deep web is translated as deep web, dark web. Conceptually, the dark web refers to a network that requires special software, special authorization, or special settings for computers to connect; the concept of the deep web refers to non-superficial network content on the Internet that cannot be indexed by standard search engines. In simple terms, the dark web is a subset of the deep web.
A picture understands the Internet, the deep web and the dark web
Anyone who has ever known anything about the dark web has heard a similar statement: there is a set of iceberg theories in the online world. That is, the network (or the Internet) that we can usually see accounts for only 4%-5% of the entire network, which can also be called the "bright network", more than 95% of the entire amount of data is hidden under the iceberg, under the iceberg, there are many unsightly things, including violence, crime...
To put it simply, the above statement seems to be no problem, in fact, this statement has serious logical loopholes and stealing concepts, which is easy to mislead.
Page 2: How to log in to the dark web
Strong demand has made the dark web thrive
For the dark web, we must not only know what it is, but also why it is so. Why is there a dark web, or rather, what is the implementation logic and existential logic of the dark web?
The dark web, also known as the "hidden server," has 400-500 times the number of domain names on the surface network. As the House of Cards describes: "96% of internet data is not accessible through standard search engines, and while most of it is useless information, there is everything on it, child trafficking, Bitcoin money laundering, hallucinogens, marijuana, bounty hackers..."
Dark Web Instructional Videos
But those are only a tiny fraction of the dark web. (Note: 96% of search engines can't search the deep web, not the dark web.) ）
As can be seen from the definition of the dark web, the dark web is a network that requires special software and authorization to connect. That is to say, from the implementation logic point of view, the dark web is not casually accessible, and the dark web link requires certain contracts, technical means and capital payment.
Tor service
While Roger Dingledine, co-founder of the Tor project, noted that most TOR users visit the TOR hidden service just to hide their identities, he told attendees of the DEF CON conference that the dark web doesn't really exist, they're just a handful of web pages.
Tor structures on the dark web (Image from freebuf)
However, this does not negate the reverse logic that most people logging into the dark web are achieved through the Tor Onion network (and of course, some are connected via i2p stealth internet projects). Tor, a tool invented by the U.S. Intelligence Agency, has playfully become the preferred way for most people today to enter the dark web.
Page 3: Strong Demand Makes the Dark Web Thrive: Benefits
Technically, logging into the dark web requires some presets and a VPN. In terms of the entire network ecology, the existence of the dark web seems to be logical.
Silk Road
Take, for example, the "Silk Road Silk Road, which was exposed in 2013," where drugs, coercion, sex slavery, child pornography, and even human organs can be bought. In the words of the site's founder, Ulbricht, "I'm going to create an economic simulator for people to experience what it's like to live in a world where there's no systematized right to use." "Unfettered desire and the need for capital accumulation have become the most important factors in the logic of the existence of the dark web, and the key to the longevity of the dark web."
Darknet founder Ross Williams Ulbricht
The silk road website was born in 2011 by rose williams Ulbricht, a former genius good student, who taught himself programming. The website needs to have a tor as the entrance to login, using the decentralized and untraceable characteristics of Bitcoin's blockchain, and the whole site adopts Bitcoin transactions. In this invisible network, the purchase of illegal goods is all justified.
Using this dark version of Taobao, silk road founders took 8%-15% from each transaction, and in just two years from 2011 to 2013, achieved a capital accumulation of 1.2 billion US dollars...
After silk road, tens of millions of dark webs rise (Note: the bottom green is the Silk Road)
The dark web is part of the entire network. For the silk road funding accumulation and ecological model, it is obvious that some people are very useful. After the fall of silk road in 2013, thousands of silk roads, even enhanced versions of silk roads, appeared.
On the other hand, the development of the Internet has reached 668 million in China alone, and the number of Internet users in the world and the number of networking devices and servers are unimaginable to ordinary people. Servers provide us with almost all of the fast computing needs of the networked world, and not all server data is public, so the existence of the dark web becomes an inevitable.
Page 4: Discern between true and false on the dark web
Those on the dark web are true and false
Due to the trigger of The Yingying Zhang's case, the dark web has once again become a hot topic, although many of the dark web legends you can search for are fake, or rather unfounded (such as the Daoxi war with aliens). But I have to admit that on the dark web, you can buy illegal items: counterfeit money, U.S. passports, heroin, guns, etc., share short videos, publish extreme thought blogs, and even launder money.
The legendary Daoxi War with aliens
In order to give you a concrete and intuitive feeling, I quote a case that occurred in Japan.
On August 25, 2007, 31-year-old toshie Isoya, an expatriate company employee, was killed in Japan's Senzo district and his body was dumped in a mountain forest in Mizuno City, Gifu Prefecture. Less than a day after the incident, the police received a call to turn themselves in, so that the case was solved within 24 hours.
Isotani with her mother as a child
The investigation revealed that the three suspects were unemployed homeless, aged 40, 36 and 31 (36-year-old Kanda Shiji was a salesman for the Asahi Shimbun), and the three had known each other for only a week. And what makes them establish a criminal alliance with each other is just an anonymous BBS that needs a password to enter, a dark web called a "secret job agency". Hidden in the shadows, centered around Nagoya, the site is made up of garbled characters, effectively circumventing police scrutiny and becoming a stronghold for illegal profiteering.
Eight years later Kandaji was sentenced to death
There are many similar illegal activities on the dark web. But according to a study by terbium labs, the dark web isn't as dark as we think, with about 55 percent of dark web content legitimate.
Page 5: When we talk about the dark web, we are talking about something
Have you ever wandered on the edge of the dark web?
What is the Dark Web? In response to this question, several different answers were obtained from different subjects interviewed by the author. Some people say that the dark web is a terrible existence, many people have become marginalized because of the dark web; some people say that the description of the dark web is not accurate enough, the dark web is actually just not the network in the common Internet that is now common to everyone; others say that the dark web is the "Silk Road", which is an important channel that leads to the murder of Zhang Yingying, on the dark web, drugs, money laundering, human trafficking, black-related and other terrorist dark crimes Videos and pictures abound...
Image taken from the American drama "House of Cards"
Everyone has heard of the dark web these days, so when we talk about the dark web, what are we actually talking about?
After some vicious events, the dark web has become synonymous with darkness, extremism, drugs and illegal crime. In the end, the dark web is also a network, the key lies in how to apply, who is applying, and what is the purpose of the application.
More important than the technology is its users
To make a perhaps inappropriate analogy, the dark web is like a special Lego brick that someone spelled out the Marvel hero of their dreams; someone poured it in lead and carried out a perfect chamber murder. But for most ordinary people, this block/dark web still exists, and there may be people who, out of curiosity, picked it up once, found that it didn't make much sense, and then put it away, leaving a layer of ash, and there was no need to pick it up again.
Written at the end: the table network of "on the sea surface" is already wonderful enough, it is recommended not to go to the dark web, curiosity kills cats (source: NetEase).