But benefits that come from aspects of this dark underworld are few amidst the disturbing and damaging threats that continue to arise. One benefit of anonymity provided by the dark web is it provides cover for citizens in oppressed countries, allowing them to gain access to the web without fear of discovery or threats to their safety from their accessing web information. And yet, experts carry the valid concern that the criminals will just regroup and re-emerge stronger than ever. A major coup using Tor, impersonation and other dark web tools to accomplish it. Recently, AlphaBay, the largest marketplace on the dark web, and another one, Hansa, were taken down by law enforcement in July. Recent ransomware attacks come from this dark place, giving cover to the criminals behind attacks like the WannaCry digital worm that took over 230,000 hostage globally, demanding ransom from the victims in their homes and upsetting hospitals, railways, gas stations, manufacturing, delivery systems and more across Europe and Asia. It’s a growing nightmare for law enforcement to find specific individuals behind these actions. Made even easier by the not just the web and Tor’s anonymity, but also of Bitcoin currency, which makes the money trail hard to trace as well. It’s unthinkable that such a black market exists, yet millions of dollars exchange hands in transactions over the dark web every day. People can pay for these kinds of attacks to be carried out against every day businesses – banks, universities, hospitals, power plants, government agencies, anyone. “If you want someone to get known as a child-porn user, no problem,” the ad reads. A new chilling example appeared in a recent “Rent-a-Hacker” ad where the anonymous advertiser offers an assortment of horrible services for hire, ranging from hack attacks to destroying the reputations of any person or business the buyer would wish. It gives cover to a growing host of nefarious activities, most of which are the stuff of nightmares, including human trafficking, child pornography, illegal drugs and more. So much so that the good guys use it too, along with journalists, the military, human rights groups and more, to access the dark web or other areas of the web with anonymity. The main SE that takes viewers there is called Tor and it’s very effective at hiding identities and locations. You can’t get there using regular search engines (SE) like Google or Bing. Only accessible by the undercover Tor browser, chilling ads run on the dark web And of that group is a scary subset of about 7,200 hidden sites that make of the dark web, where some very dark activities indeed take place 24/7. The other 96 percent is made up of the deep web - non-indexed sites consisting of databases belonging to government agencies, and financial, healthcare and education institutions like libraries and colleges. The websites we visit every day and have become so familiar with – like Facebook, Amazon, WebMD, CNN and more – of which there are about a billion websites, represent only about 4 percent of the whole Web. San Diego Tribune, AugSatya Gupta comments on the nature of dark web hacks
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