Darknet

A dark net or darknet is an overlay network within the Internet that can only be accessed with specific software, configurations, or authorization,[1] and often uses a unique customized communication protocol. Two typical darknet types are social networks[2] (usually used for file hosting with a peer-to-peer connection),[3] and anonymity proxy networks such as Tor via an anonymized series of connections.

This article is about network technology. For other uses, see Darknet (disambiguation). For websites that exist on top of this technology, see dark web.

The term 'darknet' was popularised by major news outlets to associate with Tor Onion services, when the infamous drug bazaar Silk Road used it,[4] despite the terminology being unofficial. Technology such as Tor, I2P, and Freenet was intended to defend digital rights by providing security, anonymity, or censorship resistance and is used for both illegal and legitimate reasons. Anonymous communication between whistle-blowers, activists, journalists and news organisations is also facilitated by darknets through use of applications such as SecureDrop.[5]

Terminology

The term originally described computers on ARPANET that were hidden, programmed to receive messages but not respond to or acknowledge anything, thus remaining invisible, in the dark.[6] An account detailed how the first online transaction related to drugs transpired in 1971 when students of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University traded marijuana using ARPANET accounts in the former's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.[7]

Since ARPANET, the usage of dark net has expanded to include friend-to-friend networks (usually used for file sharing with a peer-to-peer connection) and privacy networks such as Tor.[8][9] The reciprocal term for a darknet is a clearnet or the surface web when referring to content indexable by search engines.[10]

The term "darknet" is often used interchangeably with "dark web" due to the quantity of hidden services on Tor's darknet. The term is often inaccurately used interchangeably with the deep web due to Tor's history as a platform that could not be search-indexed. Mixing uses of both these terms has been described as inaccurate, with some commentators recommending the terms be used in distinct fashions.[11][12][13]

Origins

"Darknet" was coined in the 1970s to designate networks isolated from ARPANET (the government-founded military/academical network which evolved into the Internet), for security purposes.[6] Darknet addresses could receive data from ARPANET but did not appear in the network lists and would not answer pings or other inquiries.

The term gained public acceptance following publication of "The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution", a 2002 paper by Peter Biddle, Paul England, Marcus Peinado, and Bryan Willman, four employees of Microsoft who argued the presence of the darknet was the primary hindrance to the development of workable digital rights management (DRM) technologies and made copyright infringement inevitable.[14] This paper described "darknet" more generally as any type of parallel network that is encrypted or requires a specific protocol to allow a user to connect to it.[1]

Sub-cultures

Journalist J. D. Lasica, in his 2005 book Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation, described the darknet's reach encompassing file sharing networks.[15] Subsequently, in 2014, journalist Jamie Bartlett in his book The Dark Net used the term to describe a range of underground and emergent subcultures, including camgirls, cryptoanarchists, darknet drug markets, self harm communities, social media racists, and transhumanists.[16]

Uses

Darknets in general may be used for various reasons, such as:

Software

All darknets require specific software installed or network configurations made to access them, such as Tor, which can be accessed via a customised browser from Vidalia (aka the Tor browser bundle), or alternatively via a proxy configured to perform the same function.

Active

Tor is the most popular instance of a darknet, often mistakenly equated with darknet in general.[19]

A cartogram illustrating the average number of Tor users per day between August 2012 and July 2013.

Alphabetical list:

  • anoNet is a decentralized friend-to-friend network built using VPN and software BGP routers.
  • BitTorrent is a high performance semi-decentralized peer-to-peer communication protocol.[20]
  • Decentralized network 42 (not for anonymity but research purposes).
  • Freenet is a popular DHT file hosting darknet platform. It supports friend-to-friend and opennet modes.
  • GNUnet can be utilised as a darknet[21] if the "F2F (network) topology" option is enabled.[22]
  • I2P (Invisible Internet Project) is an overlay proxy network that features hidden services called "Eepsites".
  • IPFS has a browser extension that may backup popular webpages.
  • OpenBazaar is an open source project developing a protocol for e-commerce transactions in a fully decentralized marketplace
  • RetroShare is a friend-to-friend messenger communication and file transfer platform. It may be used as a darknet if DHT and Discovery features are disabled.
  • Riffle is a government, client-server darknet system that simultaneously provides secure anonymity (as long as at least one server remains uncompromised), efficient computation, and minimal bandwidth burden.[23][24]
  • Secure Scuttlebutt is a peer-to peer communication protocol, mesh network, and self-hosted social media ecosystem
  • Syndie is software used to publish distributed forums over the anonymous networks of I2P, Tor and Freenet.
  • Tor (The onion router) is an anonymity network that also features a darknet – via its onion services.
  • Tribler is an anonymous BitTorrent client with built in search engine.
  • Zeronet is a DHT Web 2.0 hosting with Tor users.

No longer supported

Defunct

See also

References
  1. Gayard, Laurent (2018). Darknet: Geopolitics and Uses. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. p. 158. ISBN 9781786302021.
  2. Wood, Jessica (1 January 2010). "The Darknet: A Digital Copyright Revolution". Richmond Journal of Law & Technology. 16 (4): 14.
  3. Mansfield-Devine, Steve (1 December 2009). "Darknets". Computer Fraud & Security. 2009 (12): 4–6. doi:10.1016/S1361-3723(09)70150-2.
  4. Martin, James (2014). Drugs on the Dark Net: How Cryptomarkets are Transforming the Global Trade in Illicit Drugs. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 2. ISBN 9781349485666.
  5. Press Foundation, Freedom of the. "SecureDrop". github. Freedom of the Press Foundation. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
  6. "Darknet.se - About darknet". 2010-08-12. Archived from the original on 2010-08-12. Retrieved 2019-11-05.
  7. Brown Sr., Michael; Hersey, Leigh (2018). Returning to Interpersonal Dialogue and Understanding Human Communication in the Digital Age. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. p. 6. ISBN 9781522541684.
  8. Wood, Jessica (2010). "The Darknet: A Digital Copyright Revolution" (PDF). Richmond Journal of Law and Technology. 16 (4): 15–17. Retrieved 25 October 2011.
  9. Mansfield-Devine, Steve (December 2009). "Darknets". Computer Fraud & Security. 2009 (12): 4–6. doi:10.1016/S1361-3723(09)70150-2.
  10. Barratt, Monica (15 January 2015). "A Discussion About Dark Net Terminology". Drugs, Internet, Society. Archived from the original on 18 January 2016. Retrieved 14 June 2015.
  11. "Clearing Up Confusion – Deep Web vs. Dark Web". BrightPlanet.
  12. NPR Staff (25 May 2014). "Going Dark: The Internet Behind The Internet". Retrieved 29 May 2015.
  13. Greenberg, Andy (19 November 2014). "Hacker Lexicon: What Is the Dark Web?". Retrieved 6 June 2015.
  14. Biddle, Peter; England, Paul; Peinado, Marcus; Willman, Bryan (18 November 2002). The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution (PDF). ACM Workshop on Digital Rights Management. Washington, D.C.: Microsoft Corporation. Retrieved 10 October 2012.
  15. Lasica, J. D. (2005). Darknets: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation. Hoboken, NJ: J. Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-471-68334-5.
  16. Ian, Burrell (28 August 2014). "The Dark Net: Inside the Digital Underworld by Jamie Bartlett, book review". Retrieved 3 June 2015.
  17. Taylor, Harriet (19 May 2016). "Hit men, drugs and malicious teens: the darknet is going mainstream".
  18. "Who uses Tor?". Tor Project. Retrieved 14 May 2017.
  19. "Anticounterfeiting on the Dark Web – Distinctions between the Surface Web, Dark Web and Deep Web" (PDF). 13 April 2015. Retrieved 1 June 2015.
  20. https://web.archive.org/web/20201112012857/https://www.medianet.kent.edu/surveys/IAD06S-P2PArchitectures-chibuike/P2P%20App.%20Survey%20Paper.htm
  21. Bennett, Krista; Grothoff, Christian; Kügler, Dennis (2003). Dingledine, Roger (ed.). Privacy Enhancing Technologies Third International Workshop (PET 2003). Springer-Verlag (Heidelberg). pp. 141–175. ISBN 9783540206101.
  22. Xiang, Yang; Lopez, Javier; Jay Kuo, C.-C.; Zhou, Wanlei, eds. (2012). Cyberspace Safety and Security: 4th International Symposium : Proceedings (CSS 2012). Springer (Heidelberg). pp. 89, 90. ISBN 9783642353628.
  23. Young Hyun Kwon (20 May 2015). "Riffle: An Efficient Communication System with Strong Anonymity" (PDF). Retrieved 12 July 2016.
  24. Larry Hardesty, MIT News Office (11 July 2016). "How to stay anonymous online". Retrieved 12 July 2016.

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