I've known about the deep web for a while. It exists in
movies and books and YouTube videos but most people won’t come across it in
their daily lives unless they’re already well informed of how to use it for whatever
their purposes may be (buying drugs, selling babies, or just doing research on
it). Before getting into how to access it however, an explanation is needed. The
way that the internet works is that it’s made up of two parts (as seen below):
the web sea (or surface web) and the deep web. The surface web consists of
Google, YouTube, Amazon, Wikipedia, Facebook, etc; just about anything that
search engines CAN find. It was estimated at having >1 trillion accessible web
pages back in 2008 and many more now. The deep web on the other hand, is estimated
to be 4 to 5 thousand times larger than the surface web and consists of things
that search engines just can’t find and although quite a few are, these websites
aren't always illegal or immoral. Just as Facebook doesn't make up all of the
surface web, Silk Road doesn't make up all of the deep web. There are websites
for spanking forums, book clubs, databases of boring information from
governmental agencies, University intranets, erotic fan fiction blogs, and
pretty much everything that already exists in the surface web but these
websites just aren't indexed (searchable) so to access them you must know the
unique URL (http://74ypjqjwf6oejmax.onion/
is the unique URL for a website about exploring steam tunnels beneath Virginia
Tech for example).
Then there’s the fun part of the deep web. The illegal, the
immoral, the FBI knocking on your door part. The “you can’t even get on unless you’re
completely anonymous and untraceable” part. This is where TOR comes in. TOR
stands for The Onion Router and is a program designed to allow users to browse
the internet anonymously. From lecture a while ago, we learned that data
transmission originated together at one point, was split up into more
manageable data packets, and arrived and was put back together at the end
point. The way that TOR works, is that instead of sending that data straight to
its destination, it scrambles it and sends it through random pathways that
obscure where it may be coming from or headed to; this allows users to surf
anonymously on any website, even those on the surface web. TOR comes into play
with the deep web in that you cannot access some of the websites on the deep
web (hiring hit men, buying drugs, illegal porn) without the anonymity provided
by TOR. The website that saved me was http://www.thehiddenwiki.net/access-the-hidden-wiki/ and http://zqktlwi4fecvo6ri.onion/wiki/Main_Page
both of which are “The Hidden Wiki” but the second link is what lists all the
unique URLs that allow you to: hire hit men, buy stolen credit cards, rent a
hacker, access search engines specifically designed to search the deep web, buy
counterfeit money and products, buy guns, access forums and messaging services,
buy more drugs than I can name, etc etc.
So, naturally I clicked on about a dozen links. The
very first thing I went to was something called “Grams” which is a Google of
the deep net basically. I typed in gun. First thing that came up? Buying code
for a 3D printed gun. Which led me to reflect on the lab a while ago about that
man wanting to provide everyone access to 3D printed guns and complaining when
legitimate websites wanted nothing to do with it and took down the code. He
should just start posting it on the deep web, he will surely find an audience
there who appreciates his efforts. Since he had kept out of mainstream media,
it may just be highly likely that he already started doing so. The only thing
is, he wanted to provide the code for free meanwhile every website I visited
for anything all required payment through the beloved and endeared Bitcoin (I
could have bought a $100 Amazon gift card for $50 worth of Bitcoin which is
like .13 at the current conversion rate). All in all, the deep web is
fascinating if you forget that people are actually buying guns and hiring hit
men and viewing illegal materials on it.
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