In my profession I have to do a lot with security related issues and from out that perspective I visit a lot of presentations and training sessions. Yesterday evening I followed a class about the darkweb.

What is the darkweb?

Source

The darkweb is the darker site of the internet which means there are sites and people that don't want to be found or seen by the 'normal' searchengines and web-users. The reason for this varies, for instance:

• Selling or trading illegal goods like weapons and drugs
• trading illegal content like child pornography, terroristic content
• Trading stolen goods like stolen creditcards or data (accounts and passwords)
• Access to sites that are forbidden in some countries but are legal in others

The URL's on the darkweb are pretty different then the ones we are used to. Of course this has everything to do to make it difficult to remember/enter but the most important is that these URL's has to be opened with a special browser.

At the training we used the TOR browser, this is the most common browser for browing the darkweb. The extension for websites is *.onion (sorry I didn't invented it lol). So a url to a site on the darkweb would be:

http://fakeidskhfik46ux.onion

"Did you know that Facebook is the most popular site on the darkweb? Isn't that a surprise.... Well, in fact it isn't.. Facebook is forbidden in Countries like China, and on the darkweb people can connect to facebook even if the 'legal' one is closed by law. So in countries like China for instance a lot of citizen use the Darkweb version of Facebook... (by the way, the hosting on Darkweb is done by Facebook itself"

Some examples of things on the darkweb

Disclaimer: The screenshots I show here are actually screenshots from real sites on the darkweb, I show them here without leading to the/a real site but they are true sites. My intention of showing them is solely for informational purposes.

Official documents

As you can see in this picture you can get all kinds of offical documents of countries. Passports, drivers licences or ID cards, or the whole package deals. And to be honest, the ammount of money you have to pay isn't that high is it?

Credit cards, Paypal accounts

It is very easy to buy a credit card of paypal account with a guaranteed ammount withdraw. The price you have to pay is mostly ten percent of the ammount you can gain with it. I was shocked by the ammount of Paypal trades, on some sites the even show you the first characters of the stolen account and the value of the account.... It turns out to be a real business model, trading stolen accounts and data.

Weapons

There is also a big trade of illegal weapons on the darkweb. I think it is insane that you can order a gun, or multiple guns, just online for relatively cheap prices (at least, that is my thought) . Even the way it is delivered is written down. Small gun's in toys and stuff and bigger guns disassembled in computer cases......

Electronics

There is a big trade on Electronic goods on the Darkweb. Often these goods are bought with stolen creditcards. This way the goods can be sold with big 'discounts' and the seller get's a certain ammount of 'white money'

Drugs

It won't surprise anybody that of course you can buy all kinds of drugs on the darkweb. Holland and France are well represented when it comes to weed. But you can also buy any other drugs like XTC, Amphetamine.

Steroids are a forbidden good in many countries. In Holland it is often used on fitnessgym's, body builders. On the darkweb you can get whatever you want and how much you want..

Counterfeit money

I always thought that fake money was something from the past. At least, I never hear any cases of payed with counterfeit money, but perhaps I am just to naive? You can just order whatever you need....

Rent-a-hacker

I thought this advertisement is shocking. Read the last bit of this ad... Ruin somebodies life....that is some serious thing... It is unimaginable for me to see which sick things you can buy on the darkweb..

Money laundry

A lot of transactions on darkweb are with Bitcoin, it is still the No1. Crypto currency on the darkweb. For Bitcoin (and many other coins) it is still traceable if they really want to find the people who paid with it. I've learned two ways of lander the money / crypto to make it more hard to recall the initial owner / buyer.

The Blender

They Blender is a technique the use to mix up the bitcoin traffice. For instance, ten people give their bitcoins to the blender, the blender mixes all those bitcoins and gives everbody the initial ammount (minus a little fee) of bitcoins from the blender. Because of the fact all the bitcoins adresses etc are mixed the bitcoins aren't traceable anymore. So the origin owner is'nt tracable anymore.

iTunes

This way of laundering money I thought was genius.
A criminal has a lot of money he want's to launder. What they do is they record a song (yes really) with a online service (can't recall the name, sorry) and the upload / post it to the iTunes store. Then they buy a lot of (stolen) iTunes cards/codes and fund a bunch of iTunes accounts with that money. When that is done these accounts are buying and streaming the song in itunes a lot of times which generate royalties. Apple then pays the royalties to the criminal and that way the money is laundered.... How inventive isn't it....

Conclusion

Although I did know of the existence of the darkweb and 'the things' you could get your hands on I was truely shocked by the ease you can reach it. On the other side, if I can get to it so easy how are things arranged with the authorities, I think they have a close eye on it so does all the things on the darkweb really distribute if you order? I don't know, but I am sure not going to try it....

For me it does aknowledge the fact that online safety is the most important and awareness is the key. For instance userid's and passwords (for online accounts like paypal etc). It is business... So I state it once again, be safe with your passwords. Never use the same combination (username / emailadress with the same password) twice. When they compromise one of your username /password they will try this combination on other services, and if you use the same over and over again changes are high more of your accounts are compromised. It is better to use a safe passwordmanager like "Lastpass" or "Keepass".

Also do use (a minimum of) two factor authentication, for instance a password and a token (soft). Google has the google authenticator in which you can store your two factor accounts. .

Stay safe because there is a whole business living on your information !!!

Have a great day

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