Introduction to the Dark Web

Have you come across the term “dark web”? As a business, you might have heard that you need to keep your data safe from the dark web. So, what is it anyway?

What is the Dark Web?

The cybercrime landscape is evolving quickly. The “Nigerian prince” email scams are now old. Cybercriminals are more sophisticated and organized now–functioning like professionals. In fact, there’s a sort of a parallel universe where they all operate in a very corporate-like manner. And that parallel universe is called the dark web.

The surface Web, the Deep Web and the Dark Web

Essentially, the internet can be categorized into three parts:

• The surface web, which includes your ‘regular’ websites–the kinds that just show up on web searches. For example, you type, “cat videos” and links to a bunch of cat videos on YouTube show up. YouTube, in this case, is an example of the surface web.
• The deep web, which shows up in web searches, but requires you to log in to view specific content. For example, your internet banking page or your Netflix subscription.
• The dark web, which takes some know-how to access.

The dark web is part of the internet that isn’t visible to search engines and requires the use of an anonymizing browser called Tor to be accessed. The dark web offers anonymity and hence is the hub for all sorts of illicit activities in today’s internet age. Strictly speaking, the dark web typically hosts illicit content. The kind of content that you find in the dark web includes:

• Credit card details
• Stolen login credentials for something as serious as internet banking accounts to something as trivial as Uber or Netflix.
• Contact details and communication platform for striking deals with various criminals
• Marketplace to buy illegal product, services and malicious code including component pieces and malware as a service

In short, the dark web is like the underworld of the internet. So, how does it concern you and why you need to steer clear of it? Read our next blog post to find out.