Discuss.

Interesting seeing that there is a "dark" side to the internet. anyone have any revelations?

8/6/2013 2:18:10 AM

Is this really a surprise to anyone? It's interesting as an example of how it's "organized" and accessed, but I don't think anyone should really be surprised that any of this stuff exists. There have always been elements hiding in the shadows of humanity since the dawn of man, both for legitimate and illegitimate reasons, and I don't see why people think the Internet should be exempt.

8/6/2013 11:17:22 AM

Are you kidding me?

Might as well visit "statedepartment.gov" because it's all run by the same people. It's nothing but a massive honey pot. CP is the exact kind of boogieman that law enforcement wants.

I don't think it could have been more transparent by the point it got to the murder-for-bitcoins operation. If you think submitting a name and address goes to anyone other than the cops, then holy crap are you naive. You would have to have absolutely no bullshit filter. I would love to see the meeting where that was pitched. The program even funds itself!

[Edited on August 6, 2013 at 11:53 AM. Reason : ]

8/6/2013 11:51:42 AM

never heard of it. will i get put on a list for visiting it to see what it is???

8/6/2013 11:59:22 AM

AFIK you have to use Tor to get there. If you could get there without it... don't.

There was recent news about Tor being hacked by malware. It also sent information to an NSA IP address.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/researchers-say-tor-targeted-malware-phoned-home-to-nsa/

But it's difficult to peel back the layers of the onion with this topic. There was only a certain subset of OS and browsers it could affect, so as far as anyone can say, Tor hasn't been compromised. Of course, there's a different issue of correlation attacks, which are dramatically more difficult but can still out certain kinds of high-traffic use.

You'll be flagged for using Tor, there's no doubt about that. The only question is if that means anything and it probably doesn't.

8/6/2013 12:08:04 PM

If you do go on there I wouldn't just browse away, there is some pretty sick stuff out there as can be noted by the recent takedown of a giant kiddie porn ring. I've looked at the popular stuff like Silk Road just to see what all the fuss was about but I got creeped out enough at that.

8/6/2013 12:19:29 PM

It was carefully designed to creep you out.

8/6/2013 1:22:08 PM

I did enjoy reading about the obviously fake scientific experiments or the hit men groups though. I seriously doubt that stuff is real, I have heard about plenty of people using the Silk Road though. Getting too far off the wiki or going into the forums is where the creep factor seems to go up exponentially.

8/6/2013 2:04:13 PM

scared of the internet? its more likely than you think!

8/6/2013 2:11:28 PM

Tor hasn't been compromised, just the vulnerable copies of Firefox in old versions of the Tor Browser Bundle: Copies of the Bundle released before 26 June 2013 contained an insecure version of Firefox (something before 17.0.7esr), which had a vulnerability (requiring Javascript to run, and unfortunately the Tor project had recently stopped setting up the Bundle to block Javascript by default, for ease of use) that someone with access to Freedom Hosting servers exploited around Friday (probably the cops, considering that the founder of FH was arrested on Thursday), thereby making visitors to about half the Onion Web vulnerable; the vulnerability actually affected all platforms, and also all versions of regular Firefox before 22 (and ESRs before 17.0.7), but the attack specifically targeted Firefox 17 on Windows, dropping a little executable that would run, send identifying info. about the user's computer over the clearnet to a server in the same general area where the intelligence community has its home, and exit without leaving any sort of backdoor or doing any damage to the machine.

The notable thing is that the government agency or contractor that pulled this scheme even needed to take such a circuitous route, rather than somehow tapping into a supposed "backdoor" in Tor; then again the more tinfoil-hatted commenters on Ars Technica suspect that the Feds still have that sort of trick up their sleeve.

[Edited on August 6, 2013 at 8:13 PM. Reason : also may I interest you in the Evil Wiki? Despite its name it's less horrifying than the Hidden Wiki]

8/6/2013 8:12:32 PM

I tried to use Tor but after a while I felt like by simply using it I would probably attract unwanted attention so I quit. Everyone is keeping an eye on Tor traffic because it is obviously popular cover for illegal actions. Not saying it doesn't have legitimate uses because it does.

It may be better than browsing without it but I do not believe it is 100% unbreakable privacy. The tech world is collectively trying to break it and I'm sure it can be done.

I would say that the information that travels across Tor is THOUSANDS OF TIMES MORE VALUABLE on the market than any other internet traffic metadata out there.

8/6/2013 8:12:58 PM

I once trolled IRC over Tor, it was good fun

BTW if you try to use Google over Tor, even without signing in, you'll probably get suspected of spam requests, so DuckDuckGo is a much better idea (they even have their own .onion site)

8/6/2013 8:15:51 PM

Quote :

"The notable thing is that the government agency or contractor that pulled this scheme even needed to take such a circuitous route, rather than somehow tapping into a supposed "backdoor" in Tor; then again the more tinfoil-hatted commenters on Ars Technica suspect that the Feds still have that sort of trick up their sleeve."

If we're talking about the crazy Ars mob, then it "obvious" that they could have obfuscated the NSA IP address. They left it in there on purpose - for someone to find.

Quote :

"I would say that the information that travels across Tor is THOUSANDS OF TIMES MORE VALUABLE on the market than any other internet traffic metadata out there."

That's an astute observation.

Quote :

"Everyone is keeping an eye on Tor traffic because it is obviously popular cover for illegal actions. Not saying it doesn't have legitimate uses because it does."

I'm tempted to be snarky, but I'll be serious. Everyone thinks of illegal activities when they think of Tor. Why? Because that's what they read about it. From where? News. Who controls the news? Our government. Who tracks your internet activity? Our government.

8/7/2013 9:11:12 AM

Can you give legitimate reasons to why someone would need to use tor? I could see it for oppressive countries and allowing it to have open forums for them to be exposed to environments that aren't oppressive but other than that I don't see much value to going through all the trouble and slow speeds that you get with tor. It's not like you go to the deep web to discuss the latest NBA trade.

8/7/2013 10:08:30 AM

Quote :

"I'm tempted to be snarky, but I'll be serious. Everyone thinks of illegal activities when they think of Tor. Why? Because that's what they read about it. From where? News. Who controls the news? Our government. Who tracks your internet activity? Our government."

I would say it's less about that and more because the illegal activities are the ones that are most fascinating. Political dissidents, private individuals... an important part of traffic, but ultimately, the general public doesn't really care too much about them. Criminal activity on the other hand makes for a much better headline.

8/7/2013 10:15:14 AM

Quote :

"Can you give legitimate reasons to why someone would need to use tor?"

You have to ask this even after all of the NSA spying revelations? Maybe they don't want to be spied on.

8/7/2013 10:31:49 AM

No shit sherlock. I can certainly understand someone not wanting to be spied on but for everyday web browsing I don't see it being a reason to move to the deep web. I don't like the NSA spying on all my online activity but I am not going to use tor to browse espn.com...

8/7/2013 10:35:42 AM

you asked for a legitimate reason to use Tor

not being spied on is a legitimate reason to use Tor

Sherlock

8/7/2013 10:44:39 AM

Since I guess I have to completely spell it out, legitimate reasons for using tor and the deep web. Didn't think I had to include the deep web in that statement since the whole thread is about it and the rest of my post was referencing it (the thread topic is about the hidden wiki after all...). The deep web doesn't seem to be a viable source for consuming normal material that most people use the Internet for, instead it seems to harbor illegal activity or it is used for forums for people in oppressed counties as I mentioned before. If there are other things it is used for that are legitimate I am interested in hearing what those things are. Not being spied on isn't accurate since the content there is far different from the regular web.

8/7/2013 10:58:11 AM

Quote :

"to harbor illegal activity or it is used for forums for people in oppressed counties as I mentioned before"

and to communicate controversial ideas that might put you on a watch list.

[Edited on August 7, 2013 at 11:02 AM. Reason : .]

8/7/2013 11:02:30 AM

Quote :

"legitimate reasons for using tor and the deep web."

You need to define the terms you're using, and it's already used incorrectly in your post. The deep web is technically the web that's not indexed by search engines. So to give you an example of the deep web, I've emailed operators of electrical equipment looking for data that was too old to be in their main index. They gave me a link to a non-public xml file. It was public data by law, but they weren't required to host it in any particular way. It wasn't on their main site. Why? I don't know. Still the deep web. This data exchange is used in industry for real commerce. Within the industry there's lots of data being shared that is technically on the deep web.

That's not what you want, but by the words you used it satisfies your query.

More likely, you want to hear a justification of the Hidden Wiki. For that, we would also need to have an understanding of the underpinning technical mechanics behind it. I do not have this knowledge.

There could be even more. I've looked into setting up personal networks, which would be a darknet. More and more people these days are running darknets in their homes. My god, with the numbers of NAS systems selling these days...

8/7/2013 11:08:56 AM

Ive used TOR in the past to get around work filters but it was so damn slow for me it was useless.

8/7/2013 11:22:50 AM

are ftp sites considered deep web?

8/7/2013 1:58:17 PM

The deep net is a WASTE of time...

8/7/2013 2:31:24 PM

^^not if they're indexed by search engines, even though technically the Web itself runs on HTTP(S) so I'm not sure whether FTP sites should be considered part of the "Web" at all (then again there is the old Gopher Web lol)

8/7/2013 4:18:28 PM

In case you run a website and want to help people in countries that censor Tor to still somehow use it (via "pluggable transports"), add the line of HTML below somewhere on your site: https://crypto.stanford.edu/flashproxy/

<iframe src="//crypto.stanford.edu/flashproxy/embed.html" width="80" height="15" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" seamless="seamless"></iframe>

3/18/2014 5:26:12 PM