Inside Deep Web - a thriving den of criminality

Inside the hidden part of the internet exists a hub of criminal activity.

Dubai — Every day, millions of people access the Internet around the world for work or pleasure. What most users don’t realise is that there exists an exponentially larger, hidden “Deep Web” which has become an online hub of criminality and illicit markets.

According to researchers, the Deep Web is up to 500 times larger than the “surface web”. It is hidden from view because it requires special browsing software, called Tor, which provides users anonymity by masking their identity and location.

Much of the Deep Web is harmless, with unremarkable items such as company and government databases, reading clubs, dictionaries and academic material. Other Deep Web sites provide forums in which dissidents in authoritarian countries and whistle-blowers can exchange information anonymously to each other or with news outlets.

But inside the Deep Web also exists a thriving den of criminal activity.

Drugs, child pornography, weapons, explosives, military manuals, counterfeit currency, false documents, hacking-for-hire services — even freelance assassins — are among the items listed for sale, according to experts.

Jamie Bartlett, director of the London-based Centre for the Analysis of Social Media and the author of a book on the digital underground, said scams and false ads are common on the Deep Web. But, he added, an array of goods and services on offer are for real though no researcher or journalist is likely to put the offers to the test by trying to buy some of them.

Transactions are hard to track, as monetary exchanges on the Deep Web are done with “Bitcoin”, a decentralised digital currency.

The scale of illegal activity on the Deep Web is impossible to quantify, but the amount of illicit transactions around the world is vast. As recently as March 12, for example, the German police busted a single Deep Web-based drug trafficking organisation with an inventory of over 317kg of illegal narcotics.

In another high-profile case, in February, an American court convicted Ross William Ulbricht, owner of “Silk Road”, an infamous Deep Web drug marketplace which American authorities say was responsible for at least $180 million worth of illegal sales.

Mohamad Amin Hasbini, senior security researcher at Kaspersky Lab in Dubai, said Tor browsers and the Deep Web provide ample opportunity to circumvent the UAE’s Internet restrictions and even commit serious crimes in the country.

“It can easily be used to bypass restrictions,” he said. “It makes anyone capable of accessing illegal websites. On the Internet, you might be able to access a gambling website. But you will not find tools to buy drugs, like on the Deep Web. It can be very dangerous, and it is accessible to everyone.”

Tor browsers are illegal in the UAE, but Hasbini also noted that it is very difficult for the authorities to track down Deep Web users.

“It cannot be done easily,” he noted. “There is no real legal possibility of tracking those people.”
While several techniques can be used to infiltrate and compromise individual Deep Web sites or detect Tor traffic from a certain location, Hasbini said that preventing its large-scale use across the country is problematic.

“For now, it is very difficult to block the Deep Web on a country level,” he said. “But the UAE government is already doing its best. It is banned, but more measures are needed.”

Bartlett said he suspects that police forces worldwide are working to infiltrate the Deep Web to put together clues about the identities of people involved in illegal activities, as well as setting up fake vendors to make people lose confidence in their ability to anonymously conduct criminal activity.

“It’s sort of like old-fashioned police work, where you’ve got human police officers trying to go around different digital backwaters, chatting to people, going undercover, trying to work out who is who, trying to pick up information and piece things together,” he said. “That’s difficult, but that’s frankly what they have to do.”

Bartlett added that the use of Tor browsers and the Deep Web will likely increase significantly — both for members of the general public and for criminals — over the next few years as demands for web privacy grow and technology improves.

“More people are considering Internet privacy important. There is a growing demand, and a continued big investment in these products. They are getting faster and quicker,” he said.

“When you combine those two things together, more and more people will migrate and use it.”

bernd@khaleejtimes.com 

• UAE