The Deep Web Performance - Report Example

DEEP WEB/DARK WEB Deep Web/Dark Web Affiliation Data Deep Web In the world of internet for those who do not wished to be watched, have developed a dark world known as the dark web or deep web. This is a hidden or invisible place on the World Wide Web which has not been placed in indexing category as it is done with the traditional online search engines. Deep web is also recognized as dark net, hidden web or invisible web. When a user searches for information from the traditional search engines, he may not have access to many web sites on the internet. These sites are hidden and are not accessible to the private users. There are many sites on dark web that need to be anonymous (Amores & Paganini, 2012). The traditional search engines cannot access the pages on the deep web. The pages on the deep web work just like any other website. They have blogs, social media sites and every other possible usage like buying and selling of services and products like our usual world wide web. But, it is the content and the services that are a big issue for the security of the community as well for the protection of the people (He, Patel, & Zhang, 2007). The appeal of deep web lies in the fact of anonymity. This factor makes deep web a special service used by the majority of criminals for illegal activities. Deep web has become a breeding ground for the criminals as it provides opportunities to hide and proceed with the illegal activities. Silk Road has used Tor Technology to hide their location but at the same time be available for the users. Dark web has become an area of concern by the law and order enforcement (Jaeger, 2014). Deep Web has been an important tool for government policies and procedures. In the year 2003 the U.S. naval research laboratory launched their intelligence based tools for penetrating into the web and named it as deep web or dark web. They also created the onion router project as an intelligence gathering tool. This is also known as Tor. Onion routing is known as a tool for removing layers of encrypted internet communication between different IPs. This is as comparable to peeling the layers of onion. The users of this system are known as Tor who are kept hidden and their identities are also masked with the help of this software (Chanler, 2014). There are other software’s similar to Tor that offer anonymous connection to the Deep web. These deep web software’s provide an independent platform for the security of the data. It is full of information data which belongs to NASA, JSTOR, US National oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and patent and Trademark Offices. Thus despite of the bad reputation, Deep web has also been used by many users who are law abiding citizens and have legitimate reasons to use Tor (Madhavan, Ko, & Ganapathy, 2008). The most common reason is that Tor helps in removing these monitoring tools which are used for traffic analysis by commercial sites. These commercial sites need information about the location of the user and in some cases other personal information like the security codes and the passwords (Paganini, 2012). The data in the Deep web is buried initially and the access is possible only by the specific users who have special browser software access to the information. This software is especially designed with the intention of concealing one’s identity and maintains the privacy of the user along with the destination of the data formation, generation and receipt in addition to the concealing of identity of the people who access it. This is a big concern if it is used by the political dissidents and criminals. The size of the deep web not yet known but it is an estimate that the World Wide Web has over 555 million sites and many pages of these web sites are not categorized. These entire uncategorized pages are included in the anonymous pages of the deep web catalogue (Chanler, 2014). There are many methods that prevent the websites to be catalogued from appearing in the traditional search engines. Following are some of the widely used methods: For preventing web crawling programs, many pages of the web site are left uncategorized and are known as pages without back links. Traditional search engines do not access such pages. Many sites need a unique ID for every user and a password which is inaccessible by a non-user (Chen, 2012). Some sites have limited access to their web pages with technical support for example: they use robots Exclusive Standard or no store directive. Certain content is intentionally hidden from the internet. It is accessible by special software’s like TOR. Users have the .onion host suffix to have access which helps them in hiding the IP address (Chamero, 2013). For those organizations that have pages of their website in the deep web or are uncategorized by mistake can work in many ways to help such issue. Organizations can work collectively to make the date visible to users which are associated with their product. They can take the following steps: The database can be categorized by static category and over view pages. There should be interlinking of pages on websites so that the users are able to visit all the information provided on different pages. A web site should have a thorough site map. This is crucial to have it present for spiders to make the content available for search. Social media sites can help in promoting a website. The site’s code should be validated. Match the site page titles with link names to similar text inside the website (OEDB, 2013). Deep web is a big concern for the experts as websites are untraceable .There is a big fear that terrorists are plotting on the deep web. As the security services are unable to reach them. A large market for prostitution and other illegal activities are just a few clicks away but the users ironically are not accessible by the security. A large variety of drugs is available for just a few Dollars. Fake driving licenses and passports are available (Williams, 2013). Deep web has a variety of illegal goods that are being sold and hit men for murder are also available at affordable prices. Many websites are dedicated to Muslims who want to start Jihad against the west. There are websites that offer ways on how to make homemade bombs without starting a suspicion in the community. The web pages and the web sites are so large in number that it is very difficult to eradicate them. Deep web has become a place for terrorists to communicate with each other without the surveillance of the law and order force. Criminals are able do whatever they like without the fear of being caught (Palmer, 2012). Most transactions on the Deep web accept Bit Coin currency for payments. This currency allows them to make transactions in a way which is totally untraceable. This factor encourages the trade between different individuals. The concept of Bit Coin currency helps in protecting the anonymity of the user as well as the seller. We have seen impressive growth of the e commerce in the last few years. If we compare it to the Deep web we see that it is almost 500 times bigger than the ordinary web. Deep web where there is no restriction on how to sell and buy the illegal products, we can well imagine the progress, the deep web and the organizations working inside it, must have made. The situation of deep web is out of control. It has become focus of the security agencies to get complete information of the websites and their content but still it is an impossible task. It is an ironic situation as the World Wide Web was made to access information that may help people all around the world who belong to different walk of life but it has now become a strong and an undetected platform for the criminals (Yang, Tang, & Gong, 2011). References 1. Amores, R. G., & Paganini, P. (2012). The Deep Dark Web: The Hidden World. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. 2. Chamero, J. (2013). The Web of the People. Juan Chamero. 3. Chanler, N. (2014). How the deep web works. Retrieved November 18, 2014, from howstuffworks.com: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/how-the-deep-web-works.htm 4. Chen, H. (2012). Dark Web Research Overview. Integrated Series in Information Systems, 2-18. 5. He, B., Patel, M., & Zhang, Z. (2007). Accessing the deep web. ACM Digital Library, 94-101. 6. Jaeger, C. (2014). Deep Web Secrecy and Security. Deep Web Guides. 7. Madhavan, J., Ko, D., & Ganapathy, V. (2008). Googles Deep Web crawl. ACM Digital Library, 1241-1252. 8. OEDB. (2013). The ultimate guide to insisible web. Retrieved November 17, 2014, from OEDB.org: http://oedb.org/ilibrarian/invisible-web/ 9. Paganini, P. (2012). The good and the bad of deep web. Retrieved November 17, 2014, from http://securityaffairs.co/: http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/8719/cyber-crime/the-good-and-the-bad-of-the-deep-web.html 10. Palmer, A. (2012). Dep web: drugs, guns, assasins, jet planes all for sale. mirror.co.uk. 11. Williams, K. (2013). Untangling the Dark Web: Taking on the Human Sex Trafficking Industry. Women in Engineering Magazine, IEEE, 23-26. 12. Yang, C., Tang, X., & Gong, X. (2011). Identifying Dark Web clusters with temporal coherence analysis. Intelligence and Security Informatics (ISI), 2011 IEEE International Conference, 167 - 172. Read More