Darknet

What is Darknet?

The “Darknet,” also referred to as the “Darkweb,” is part of the superior “deep web,” a network of private/confidential websites that survive on an encrypted network. Simply put, it’s a collection of thousands of websites that can’t be accessed via normal means and aren’t indexed by search engines like Google or Yahoo.

Why is it used?

Just like its name, the place is up to no good. Cyber criminals use this place to perform crimes such as file corruption, hacking, and so on. It also allows file sharing of sensitive nature or illegal items. There is also trading of restricted goods here.
On a slightly better side, it can also be used to protect a citizen’s privacy from mass surveillance. Whistle blowers may be able to reveal real data on this platform and leak news that is being hidden.

Usage and access

Uses of the Darknet are almost as broad and as varied as the internet: entirely everything from email & social media to hosting and sharing files, websites about news and e-commerce. Accessing it requires specific software, configurations or authorization, often using nonstandard communication protocols and ports. Currently, two of the highly well-known ways to access the Darknet are through two intersection networks as mentioned below.

a) TOR: It stands for “The onion router” or “The onion routing” and is fabricated mainly to keep users unspecified. Similar as per the layers of an onion, information is collected and sustained within multiple layers of encryption. Each layer exposes the next transmit until the final layer sends the information to its goal. Data is sent bidirectionally, so here the information is being sent back and forth through the same tunnel. In fact, on any given day, more than 1 million users are active on the TOR network.

b) I2P: This term is also known as the Invisible Internet Project, is designed for user-to-user file sharing. It takes information and summarizes it within multiple layers. Just like a clove of garlic, data is grouped simultaneously with other people’s data to avoid unpacking and inspection, and it shares that information through a unidirectional tunnel.

Now we know the type of information and tools behind Darknet initiated cyber threats, we can begin to formulate a plan to detect threats and prevent incidents.

What is Darknet Intelligence?

Darknet Intelligence is a system that makes every piece of information visible and enables damage to be limited within companies. Darknet Intelligence is the need of the era, as most of the companies have data and information that’s to be protected from the cyber criminals.

Darknet Intelligence Solution: Sunartek’s Vision Platform

Sunartek’s Vision platform automatically and continuously crawls the internet and Darknet, extracting and indexing millions of pages daily to create the largest searchable database of Darknet content.
Our Darknet experts performed a review and categorization of 58,760 TOR and I2P sites in our database at the time of analysis. Our Vision platform allows users to search the world’s largest database of Darknet content with simplicity. The platform allows you to know about the Darknet index scores for the companies who are more prominent to be targeted by the hackers. Darknet Intelligence from Sunartek can partner you in enhancing the IT risk management and provide advanced security to your business.

Beneficial Features

• Unique archival capability: Compromised data on the Darknet is often uploaded and deleted within a few days. While Sunartek’s database gives organizations the ability to go back 60 days or further up to a year to get information.
• Complete security solution: Sunartek offers a complete security solution portfolio for the Darknet, based on proprietary technology – the Sunartek Vision platform – that discovers, analyzes and reports stolen or misappropriated data.
• Search and filter capabilities: Search results can be filtered to reflect what is most relevant for the customer’s needs. The parameters include Country, Crawl Date, Credentials, Credit Cards, Domain, Email Addresses, Hackishness1, IRC, Language, Social Security Number and Topic.
• Intuitive user interface: Create a targeted search using proprietary, predefined queries and filters. It saves searches that automatically run on a specified schedule. One can easily view the number of active critical, high, medium and low results of saved searched on an ‘alerts’ dashboard.

Overall, considering that the Darknet is usually used for illicit purposes, it makes sense that most of the general populace has no reason to access it. However, as digital currencies become more common in the financial world, it’s possible that the Darknet will become a feature of everyday life. It is important to keep in mind that, no matter how commonplace the Darknet becomes soon, it may always provide criminals a means of eluding capture and true anonymity is never guaranteed.