Dark web : Reality or just a show off?

According to Wikipedia, The dark web, also confusingly referred to as the deep web and conflated with deep web search is the World Wide Web content that exists on darknets, overlay networks which use the public Internet but which require specific software, configurations or authorization to access. The dark web forms a small part of the Deep Web, the part of the Web not indexed by search engines. 

The dark nets which constitute the dark web include small, friend-to-friend peer-to-peer networks, as well as large, popular networks like Freenet, I2P, and Tor, operated by public organizations and individuals. Users of the dark web refer to the regular web as the Clearnet due to its unencrypted nature. The Tor dark web may be referred to as Onionland, a reference to the network's name as "the onion router."

DARK WEB TOR .ONION URLS DIRECTORIES - ALL IN ONE

A December 2014 study by Gareth Owen from the University of Portsmouth found that the most commonly requested type of content on Tor was child pornography, followed by black markets, while the individual sites with the highest traffic were dedicated to botnet operations. Many whistleblowing sites maintain a presence as well as political discussion forums. Sites associated with Bitcoin, fraud related services and mail order services are some of the most prolific. To counter the trend of controversial content, the artist collective Cybertwee held a bake sale on an onion site.

Regular web based hidden services: Botnets, Bitcoin services, Dark markets, Hacking services, Hoaxes and unverified contents, Fraud services, Phishing and scams, Illegal or ethically disputed pornography, Terrorism etc. 

Top web based hidden services of 2015 are: Gambling, Guns, Chat, New(things), Abuse, Books, Directories, Blog, Porn, Hosting, Hacking, Search, Anonymity, Forum, Counterfeit, Whistle blower, Wiki, Mail, Bitcoin, Fraud, Market, Drugs

Botnets: Botnets are more often structured with their command and control servers based on a censorship resistant hidden service, creating a large amount of bot related traffic.

A botnet is a number of Internet-connected computers communicating with other similar machines in an effort to complete repetitive tasks and objectives. This can be as mundane as keeping control of an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel, or it could be used to send spam email or participate in distributed denial-of-service attacks. The word botnet is a combination of the words robot and network. The term is usually used with a negative or malicious connotation.

Legal botnets - The term botnet is widely used when several IRC bots have been linked and may possibly set channel modes on other bots and users while keeping IRC channels free from unwanted users. This is where the term is originally from, since the first illegal botnets were similar to legal botnets. A common bot used to set up botnets on IRC is eggdrop.

Illegal botnets - Botnets sometimes compromise computers whose security defenses have been breached and control conceded to a third party. Each such compromised device, known as a "bot", is created when a computer is penetrated by software from a malware (malicious software) distribution. However, it could also be someone (or a spider) that hacks into a computer. The controller of a botnet is able to direct the activities of these compromised computers through communication channels formed by standards-based network protocols such as IRC and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

Botnets are increasingly rented out by cyber criminals as commodities for a variety of purposes.

Bitcoin services: Bitcoin services such as tumblers are often available on Tor, and some offer darknet market integration. Bitcoin is a digital asset and a payment system invented by Satoshi Nakamoto who published the invention in 2008 and released it as open-source software in 2009. The system is peer-to-peer; users can transact directly without an intermediary. Transactions are verified by network nodes and recorded in a public distributed ledger called the block chain. The ledger uses bitcoin as its unit of account. The system works without a central repository or single administrator, which has led the U.S. Treasury to categorize bitcoin as a decentralized virtual currency. Bitcoin is often called the first cryptocurrency, although prior systems existed. Bitcoin is more correctly described as the first decentralized digital currency. It is the largest of its kind in terms of total market value.

Bitcoins are created as a reward for payment processing work in which users offer their computing power to verify and record payments into a public ledger. This activity is called mining and miners are rewarded with transaction fees and newly created bitcoins. Besides being obtained by mining, bitcoins can be exchanged for other currencies, products, and services. Users can send and receive bitcoins for an optional transaction fee. 

Very soon I will try to make a detailed blog post about this Bitcoin cause its a not a topic to talk only 5 to 10 sentences. 

Dark markets: A darknet market or cryptomarket is a commercial website on the dark web that operates via darknets such as Tor or I2P. Most function as black markets, selling or brokering transactions involving drugs, cyber-arms, weapons, counterfeit currency, stolen credit card details, forged documents, unlicensed pharmaceuticals, steroids, other illicit goods as well as the sale of legal products. In December 2014, a study by Gareth Owen from the University of Portsmouth suggested the second most popular content on Tor were darknet markets. 

Commercial darknet markets, which mediate transactions for illegal drugs and other goods, attracted significant media coverage starting with the popularity of Silk Road and its subsequent seizure by legal authorities. Other markets sell software exploits and weapons

Following on from the model developed by Silk Road, contemporary markets are characterised by their use of darknet anonymised access (typically Tor), bitcoin payment with escrow services, and eBay-like vendor feedback systems.

Hacking services: Many hackers sell their services there individually or as a part of groups. Such groups include hackforum, Trojanforge, Mazafaka, dark0de and the TheRealDeal darknet market. Some have been known to track and extort apparent pedophiles.

One of the most popular Hacking team of now a days "Anonymous"

In the computer security context, a hacker is someone who seeks and exploits weaknesses in a computer system or computer network. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, such as profit, protest, challenge, enjoyment, or to evaluate those weaknesses to assist in removing them. The subculture that has evolved around hackers is often referred to as the computer underground and is now a known community. While other uses of the word hacker exist that are related to computer security, such as referring to someone with an advanced understanding of computers and computer networks, they are rarely used in mainstream context. They are subject to the longstanding hacker definition controversy about the term's true meaning. In this controversy, the term hacker is reclaimed by computer programmers who argue that someone who breaks into computers, whether computer criminal (black hats) or computer security expert (white hats), is more appropriately called a cracker instead. Some white hat hackers[who?] claim that they also deserve the title hacker, and that only black hats should be called "crackers".

Different types of hackers - White Hat, Black Hat, Grey Hat, Elite, Script Kiddie, Neophyte, Blue Hat, Hacktivists, Nation State, Organized Criminal Gang

Technics used by different types of hackers - Vulnerability Scanner, Finding Vulnerabilities, Brute-force attack, Password cracking, Packet analyzer, Spoofing (phishing) attack, Rootkit, Social Engineering (Intimidation-Helpfulness-Name dropping- Technical), Trojan Horse, Computer virus, Computer worm, Keystroke logging, Tools and procedures.

Hoaxes and unverified contents: There are reports of crowdfunded assassinations and hitmen for hire, however these are believed to be exclusively scams. The creator of Silk Road was arrested by the FBI for his site and allegedly hiring a hitman to kill six people, although the charges were later dropped.

There is an urban legend that one can find live murder on the dark web. The term "Red Room" has been coined based on the Japanese animation and urban legend of the same name. However the evidence points towards all reported instances being hoaxes.

On June 25 2015, a creepy indie game Sad Satan was reviewed by Youtubers Obscure Horror Corner which they claimed to have found via the dark web. Various inconsistencies in the channel's reporting cast doubt up the reported version of events.

Carding (Fraud) services: There are numerous carding forums, as well as fraud and counterfeiting services. Many such sites are scams themselves.

Carding is a term describing the trafficking of credit card, bank account and other personal information online as well as related fraud services. Carding activities also encompass procurement of details, and money laundering techniques. Modern carding sites have been described as full-service commercial entities.

There are a great many of methods to acquire credit card and associated financial and personal data. The earliest known carding methods have also included 'trashing' for financial data, raiding mail boxes and working with insiders.[dubious – discuss] Some bank card numbers can be semi-automatically generated based on known sequences.


Today, various methodologies include skimmers at ATMs, hacking an ecommerce or payment processing site or even intercepting card data within a point of sale network. Randomly calling hotel room phones asking guests to 'confirm' credit card details is example of a social engineering attack vector.

Since 2006, Liberty Reserve had become a popular service for cyber criminals. When it was seized in May 2013 by the US government, this caused a major disruption to the cyber crime ecosystem.

Today, some carders prefer to make payment between themselves with bitcoin,[better source needed][not in citation given] as well as traditional wire services such as Western Union, MoneyGram or the Russian WebMoney service.][not in citation given]

Funds from stolen cards themselves may be cashed out via buying pre-paid cards, gift cards or through reshipping goods though mules then reselling through online marketplaces like eBay. Increased law enforcement scrutiny over reshipping services has led to the rise dedicated criminal operations for reshipping stolen goods.

Phishing and scams: Phishing via cloned websites and other scam sites are numerous, with darknet markets often advertised with fraudulent urls.

Phishing is the attempt to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details (and sometimes, indirectly, money), often for malicious reasons, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. The word is a neologism created as a homophone of fishing due to the similarity of using fake bait in an attempt to catch a victim. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, banks, online payment processors or IT administrators are commonly used to lure unsuspecting victims. Phishing emails may contain links to websites that are infected with malware. Phishing is typically carried out by email spoofing or instant messaging, and it often directs users to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one. Phishing is an example of social engineering techniques used to deceive users, and exploits the poor usability of current web security technologies. Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include legislation, user training, public awareness, and technical security measures. Many websites have now created secondary tools for applications, like maps for games, but they should be clearly marked as to who wrote them, and users should not use the same passwords anywhere on the internet.

Phishing is a continual threat, and the risk is even larger in social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Hackers could create a clone of a website and tell you to enter personal information, which is then emailed to them. Hackers commonly take advantage of these sites to attack people using them at their workplace, homes, or in public in order to take personal and security information that can affect the user or company (if in a workplace environment). Phishing takes advantage of the trust that the user may have since the user may not be able to tell that the site being visited, or program being used, is not real; therefore, when this occurs, the hacker has the chance to gain the personal information of the targeted user, such as passwords, usernames, security codes, and credit card numbers, among other things.

Puzzles: Puzzles such as Cicada 3301 and successors will sometimes use hidden services in order to more anonymously provide clues, often increasing speculation as to the identity of their creators.

Illegal or ethically disputed pornography: There is regular law enforcement action against sites distributing child pornography – often via compromising the site by distributing malware to the users. Sites use complex systems of guides, forums and community regulation.

Other content includes sexualised torture and killing of animals and revenge porn. Pornography is a big industry. 

Terrorism: There are at least some real and fraudulent websites claiming to be used by Daesh, including a fake one seized in Operation Onymous. In the wake of the November 2015 Paris attacks an actual such site was hacked by an Anonymous affiliated hacker group GhostSec and replaced with an advert for Prozac.

More detailed information will come up very soon. All the information has been collected from directly Wikipedia and other media. Information's are realistic and not hoax. I will try my best to post about every single topic in up coming days. It will take some times but I will do.