The Dark Side Of Dark Net Markets

Inside every working anarchy there's an Old Boy Network. The internet is a great and popular invention that has changed, developed and improved today’s society. Yo-Yo Ma, once described the famous historical Silk Road as the ‘Internet of Antiquity’ meaning, the ancient internet, how and why would Yo-Yo Ma come to such a theory, the Silk Road and the internet may not have existed during the same period of time but there are similarities and difference to prove Yo-Yo Ma’s theory.

Tor allows users to surf the net, chat and send instant messages anonymously, and is employed by a large form of folks for each licit and illicit functions. Tor has, maybe, been utilized by criminal enterprises, hacktivism teams, and enforcement agencies at cross functions, typically simultaneously; likewise, agencies among the U.S. government multifariously fund Tor (the U.S. State Department, the National Science Foundation, and – through the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

Throughout the development of human communication, no service proved more useful than that of the Silk Road. It was a network of trade, employing travelers to trek across the world to buy and sell goods along the eastern hemisphere. This constant web of bartering and trading led to societies becoming more intertwined and connected with one another, creating a large social and economic trades. Throughout 500 BCE - 1000 CE, the eastern hemisphere experienced a series of changes and continuities directly from the emergence of the Silk Road. The eastern hemisphere societies underwent heavy population increase due to trade, but the purpose of the Silk Road never changed. Some trade routes that comprised the entire network include overland trade from China to Rome and the Indian Ocean Sea Lanes that joined Asia, Africa,and the Mediterranean basin.

The sharing of information may well be the most advanced activity of the twenty-first century occurring across ages and backgrounds with relative ease. Nevertheless, the use of information that is aired through the internet raises several genuine concerns regarding nature, intent, source, and destination as well as the consequences of the content. This is particularly true when the information has to do with people 's identities and other activities that may touch on critical aspects of national security and unauthorized business. As such, there is a mix of reactions among individuals regarding the extent of privacy they would like regarding information that they share or retrieve on the internet. While some may have genuine concerns such as protecting their identity, others are on malicious tracks to cover their person and conduct unwarranted business on the web. The mix of concerns led to the rise of the Dark Web on darknets. A darknet is an overlay network that utilizes the public Internet but requires authorization or special software to access mainly to protect the user’s identity and location from network surveillance and traffic analysis (Sui, Caverlee & Rudesill 2003). Such trends on the internet raise the question; is the Dark Web an important and necessary tool to offset pervasive online surveillance in contemporary society or is the moral panic surrounding the Dark Web in global news media justified? The aim of this research is to answer the raised question

The Department of Justice report entitled "Investigations Involving the Internet and Computer Networks" (2007) states that the Internet may be used by criminals for various reasons including the trading or sharing of information, concealing or assuming another identity, identifying and gathering information on victims and communicating with co-conspirators. The Internet may also be used by criminals for the distribution of information or alternatively misinformation and for the coordination of meetings,

In the article “The Untold Story of Silk Road,” by Joshuah Bearman, he writes about Ross Ulbricht, describing the history and the founder of this underground black market named the “Silk Road.” In 2011, Ross Ulbricht, a materials scientist, started a new way to sell and buy drugs. An ideology of a libertarian utopia, free from governments prying eyes would be the basis of this site. Dreaming of a website that would be a black market to buy and sell drugs, Ulbricht created and fostered what he would call “The Silk Road.” The site saw major success with millions of dollars in bitcoins, an online currency used to purchase and sell items anonymously, coming to the site and ultimately making millions in commission. People from all over the world

The Silk Road was a trade network the connected the East to the West on the Eurasian continent. This trade included both overland and maritime routes. The central Asian kingdoms and peoples became the nexus point for much of this trade which lasted from the 3rd century B.C.E. to the 15th century C.E. Many products and other cultural expressions moved along the Silk Road and diffused among various kingdoms along it. In breaking down and separating the patterns of interaction that occurred along the Silk Road from 200 B.C.E. to 1450 C.E., one can conclude that changes and continuities in these interactions included products traded (changes in specific products and impact, continuity in luxury goods), cultural expressions and diffusion

Adam Segal’s “The Hacked World Order” reveals many prevalent issues in today’s technologically centered society. Starting at Year Zero, June 2012 to June 2013, the battle over cyberspace witnessed world-changing cyberattacks. This was accomplished due to the fact that nearly 75% of the world’s population has easy access to a mobile phone, and the Internet connects nearly 40% of the total human population, which is nearly 2.7 billion people. With that being said, cyberattacks are becoming a more realistic form of terror.

Security and privacy concerns present challenges for law enforcement combating deep web criminal activity. Crimes committed on or with the Internet are relatively new. Those crimes include illicit trade in drugs, weapons, wildlife, stolen goods, or people; illegal gambling; sex trafficking; child pornography; terrorism and anarchy; corporate and sovereign espionage; and financial crimes. Police agencies have been fighting an uphill battle always one step behind an ever evolving digital landscape and the criminals who exploit it. The novelty of the Internet begets jurisdictional and legal issues law enforcement must address while remaining ethical and holding to the code of law. Due to the anonymous nature of deep web criminal activity and the means for uncovering perpetrators, privacy concerns of citizens legally using the same software or websites are now a hot topic.

"Profound Web" starts as an enlightening outline of the Internet 's non-listed advanced substratum, then limits its center to relate the capture, arraignment and conviction of Ross Ulbricht, charged originator and administrator of the infamous Silk Road online bazaar.

The agencies employed by governments to police the web in order to protect the vulnerable have seen an increase in child pornography and online fraud. The speed at which information can be distributed and the number of people that can be reached attracts those that are intent on causing harm. The term “cybercrime” is becoming more widely used. The financial gains that can be made and the anonymity the internet can provide, make the virtual world of cyberspace a haven for criminals. Although the internet has huge benefits for information gathering and social networking, in the wrong hands it can cause harm to the vulnerable and criminals are able to vanish into the underground with the use of false identities that are hard to track online.

The Dark Web is a term that is referred to specifically as a collection of websites that are publicly visible, but hide the IP addresses (Location) of the servers that run them. Thus they can be visited by any web user, but it is very difficult to work out who is behind and using the sites. And you cannot find these sites using any regular search engines such as google. Almost all sites on the Dark Web hide their identity and IP address using the Tor encryption tool. You can use Tor to hide your identity, and spoof your location. When a website is run through Tor it has much the same effect.

From the advent of the Internet, there came with it the opportunity for any of its users to have access to any information they seeked right at their fingertips. With this access; entertainment, market opportunities, educational information, productivity, and global communication were able to grow and flourish, however with these gains seen came with it the weakening of the once secure national strength seen in nations. In the last two decades cyberspace has been defined as the 'fifth battleground’ for international relations, with the aspects of cyber war, cyber terrorism, and cybercrime as some of the largest threats to the security of the national and international community. (Popović, 2013) With this ‘fifth battleground’ of the cyberspace thrown into the international battlegrounds of old, its effectiveness and effect on the both the modern state and the international bodies of the world, posing the question of how will this increased accessibility to the cyberspace will affect national security in the coming years?

In today’s world, we are all in some way connected to or involved with the internet. We all use different services that we feel either enrich our lives or make them more enjoyable every day, from email to FaceBook, MySpace, and e-commerce. We all take a sort of false comfort in the basic anonymity of the internet; however, when we think about it, that could end up being the single biggest risk to our own safety today. When we typically think of crimes committed against us, we could probably name several: mugging, theft, scams, murder, and rape. For these, things we all take as many necessary steps as we can to help lower the chances of them happening to us because they are on the forefront of our minds. However, most of us don’t take the

As technology has propelled forward in our exploration of knowledge relating to computers and their science it is understandable that there are still areas of this field which may yet remain unexplored. One particular field being the Dark Web, which has been defined as an area of the deep web which has, “been intentionally hidden and is therefore inaccessible through standard [web] browsers.” (Brightplanet.) Although this web has evolved over the course of many years, possibly dating back to the 1990s and the development of onion routing, it has advanced itself into an industry which no one could have ever predicted. Further as well delve deeper into this developmental occurrence known as the Dark Web, I feel that we must ask ourselves how this has evolved into what we know it as today and whether or not it represents our future or past in dealing with the internet activities.