by Torben Johnson and Étienne-Alexandre Beauregard
Its origin
The dark web, not to be confused with the deep web*, started off a bit like the internet itself. It was a project by the U.S. military who was searching for a way of communication with Americans assets without detection. Thanks to the help of some of their mathematicians, the idea of onion routing was born in 1995 and fully developed in 1997. It was later on released in 2004, and by 2006, a group of developers had finished the The Onion Router project (Tor for short) and the dark web ushered into existence.
How it works
The dark web is a part of the world-wide web that only exists through special browsers. These browsers use a different networking system called onion routing, which consists of shrouding the data with multiple layers of encryption (like layer of an onion), and transmitted to a network node which will “peel” one layer of encryption. This layer contains the location of the next node and so on until it reaches the final node. At that point it has arrived at its destination. This network allows complete anonymity to the user since only the nodes that have immediately preceded it and follows it see where it comes from. Interesting fact: all URLs on the dark net finish with .onion
Its uses
Now this is where it starts to get really interesting. The dark net anonymity has created the rise of many colourful websites, to say the least. The websites can range from equivalents of Amazon to drugs, weapons and malware programs. There are also many sites supporting illegitimate triple-X content and extremism, but it is not all shady. There are also sites for whistleblowers and journalists to submit content they might be killed or persecuted for otherwise. Same goes for many people living in countries where the internet is censored and are oppressed. The dark web is the only way for these people to share their ideas without censorship from the state. Many people use the dark web because they don’t like it when many companies make money from selling their data to data brokers (e.g. Google), but that’s a subject for another article. So, in conclusion, the dark web is a place of wonders and terrors but it’s also a place of interest.
*The deep web is of the web that is not possible to access via search engines such as Google and Bing.
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