Tor's hidden service is a website that takes place in the Tor network, were services like Search Engine, Directories, Web / pop3 email, Private Messages (PM), Drop Boxes, Re-mailers, Bulletin Boards (BBS), Image Boards, Currency Exchange, Blog, E-Commerce, Social Networks, Micro-Blogs are hosted by using rendezvous points within the Tor networks. Other Tor users can only connect to these hidden services, by knowing the meeting address also known as an introduction point where the client gets the public key to access the hidden service, before that happens the hidden service needs to be advertise its existence in the Tor network so the clients will be able to contact it.Like any other tools, Tor has the potential for misuse and abuse, its “Hidden Services” feature has come under fire due to the wrong doing of those who use its capabilities to break the law. On October 2, 2013, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) shut down the Silk Road, an online marketplace that operated as a Tor Hidden Service. Referred to as the “Amazon of illegal drugs”, the website was a haven were drugs, murder, and other goods (both legal and illegal) could be solicit. The FBI arrested Ross William Ulbricht, and identified him as the founder and chief operator "Dread Pirate Roberts”, he was charged with soliciting murder, money laundering, facilitating computer hacking and narcotics trafficking violations. During the marketplace takedown the FBI also seized $174,000 bitcoins worth over $45 million dollars. A new online marketplace, Silk Road 2.0, has already taken the place of its predecessor under the leadership of a new “Dread Pirate Roberts”. This type of marketplace are starting to become more prevalent on the deep dark web.
A new search engine ...
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...eved April 21, 2014, from http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:TorBlock
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15. Jansen, R., Tschorsch, F., Johnson, A., & Scheuermann, B. (n.d.). The Sniper Attack: Anonymously Deanonymizing and Disabling the Tor Network. http://www.robgjansen.com/. Retrieved April 21, 2014, from http://www.robgjansen.com/publications/sniper-ndss2014.pdf
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“The Onion Field” directed by Harold Becker is a true story, set in the 1960’s, about two men named Greg Powell (James Woods) and Jimmy Smith (Franklyn Seales) who meet through a mutual friend. The two men become close and soon become business partners. They go around together robbing places such as stores to get money. On one excursion to gain some money, they are stopped by two Los Angeles Department police officers named Karl Hettinger (John Savage) and Ian Campbell (Ted Danson). When Campbell asks Powell to step out of the car, he grabs him and puts a gun to his back, pushing him around to the other side of the car. Powell forces the other officer, Hettinger, to hand over his gun to Smith. Without a choice he does so. Powell and Smith take the officers prisoner and drive them out to a middle of nowhere onion field in Bakersfield, California. Powell ends up shooting Campbell once in the mouth, but not before mentioning the Lindbergh Law. He later shoots him four more times while Smith shoots at Hettinger who has escaped. After Smith escapes with the car, Powell is arrested and blames the shooting on Smith. Over several years an investigation and trial goes on to find out the true events of that night. Both men are sentenced to the gas chamber and wait for their time in prison. In the meantime, Hettinger is suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as depression and keeps having nightmares about what occurred that night. He loses his jobs and begins stealing as a coping mechanism. After some time, Powell and Smith get a re-trial and are sentenced to life. After the trial, Hettinger is offered a job in Bakersfield, near the onion field. He and his family move out there. Eventually he learns to deal with the...
and their use. In Committee on Deterring Cyber attacks: Informing Strategies and Developing Options (Ed.), Proceedings of a Workshop on Deterring Cyber attacks: Informing Strategies and Developing Options for U.S. Policy. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press.
In sybil attack, a attacker presents multiple addresses and behaves as if it were a group of nodes. There are, mainly, two different ways through which a sybil node can get an identity; stealing other node’s identity or fabricating fake identities. By impersonating a large number of nodes in the network, the attacker forbids other nodes from using those addresses, it can escape from detection systems. This attack can strongly harm geographic routing protocols, and can even threat multiple path routing schemes and node localization [18].
Murdoch, S. J., & Roberts, H. (2013). Internet Censorship and Control [Guest editors' introduction]. IEEE Internet Computing, 17(3), 6-9. doi:10.1109/MIC.2013.5
When you think of the internet, usually what first comes to mind is social networking, online marketplaces, and other places that don’t sound that bad. Look deeper and you’ll find that the internet isn’t as nice as you thought it was. This “dark side” of the net is comprised of everything looked down upon in the real world – drugs, weapons, false identities, and even hit men for hire exist in this rough-and-tumble darknet. Not just physical products, but virtual products float around as well; from term papers to file sharing and even e-currency populate this dark area.
Bitcoin is a form of digital currency that is similar to physical cash stored in a digital form. It is the first fully implemented cryptocurrency protocol utilizing an open source peer-to-peer payment system. As a transfer protocol, it fundamentally functions as a money transfer medium that sends bitcoins from user to user without the need of a third-party intermediary and the system is protected by peer-reviewed cryptographic algorithms. This cryptographic digital currency simultaneously provides users a method to exchange money for free or a nominal fee, which is mutually beneficial for retailers and consumers. The main concern is that it can be used for illegal activities such as the purchase of drugs, weapons and other illegal goods. Albeit true, the concern also exists with all other forms of regulated currency, such as cash and wire transfers. Anonymity is one of the greatest Bitcoin perks, however, nothing is as untraceable as cash. It is the solution to the leading economic and security issues that have left everyone vulnerable, particularly in the wake after the Target security breach in which hackers stole unencrypted credit card and debit card data for 40 million customers’ as well as their pins over the span of two weeks before it was detected. In addition, these hackers were also able to obtain the names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses of 70 million customers (Andreesen 6). If Bitcoin were to be used as the standard form of payment, the transaction data does not identify the purchaser’s identity and all information is encrypted. It is the most secure payment method and is a more secure future. Bitcoin is a technologically innovative soluti...
TOR (Roger Dingledine) is a circuit based low-latency anonymous communication service. TOR is now in its second generation and was developed from the Onion routing program. The routing system can run on several operating systems and protect the anonymity of the user. The latest TOR version supports perfect forward secrecy, congestion control, directory servers, integrity checking and configurable exit policies. Tor is essentially a distributed overlay network which works on the application layer of the TCP protocol. It essentially anonymizes all TCP-based applications like web-browsing, SSH, instant messaging. Using TOR can protect against common form of Internet surveillance known as “traffic analysis” (Electronic Frontier Foundation). Knowing the source and destination of your internet traffic allows others to track your behavior and interests. An IP packet has a header and a dat...
Terrorism is a growing threat in modern times. Ultimately all activities need co-ordination and such co-ordination is facilitated by communication. Terrorist activities need communication as well as any other activity. In order to avoid getting traced, such communication can be done over secure lines on open public networks or hacked private networks.
Privacy threats are currently the biggest threat to National Security today. The threats are not only concerning to the government, however. An alarming 92% of Americans are concerned that the power grid may be vulnerable to a cyber-attack (Denholm). Although this is a more recent development to the cyber threats we have experienced, this is not the first time that privacy threats have stepped into the limelight as people are forced to watch their every online move.
In the real world, most encounters in everyone's daily lives are anonymous ones. Chatting with a person beside you in a café or talking to an assistant while shopping for a pair of pants- these are interactions between two unknown persons; however, these contacts do not affect our lives the way some of the anonymous interactions in the cyberspace does so. Chat rooms, net forums, and even the spam mails most people get u...
Part of the allure of the Internet has always been the anonymity it offers its users. As the Internet has grown however, causing capitalists and governments to enter the picture, the old rules are changing fast. E-commerce firms employ the latest technologies to track minute details on customer behavior. The FBI's Carnivore email-tracking system is being increasingly used to infringe on the privacy of netizens. Corporations now monitor their employees' web and email usage. In addition to these privacy infringements, Internet users are also having their use censored, as governments, corporations, and other institutions block access to certain sites. However, as technology can be used to wage war on personal freedoms, it can also be employed in the fight against censorship and invasion of privacy.
Many people have never heard of one of the most dangerous places in the world, and it is not on land. The Dark Web, also considered the Deep Web, is a hidden part of the internet which is undetected by search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Etc. The dark web not accessible without special browsers. The Dark web is estimated to be 4,000–5,000 times larger than the web that everybody knows about. (Finklea 2015) Although the Dark Web is good for being anonymous, the dark web is being used by too many people for illegal issues. These include: drugs, guns, murders, hitmen, and a numerous amount of other issues. Some people who use the Dark Web believe is it good because it keeps you anonymous. However, a person has to be smart about
As we evolve in the information age, online privacy rights have grown over the past years. In 1986, a federal law was passed to protect an individual’s electronical information. “This law was produced to make a fair balance among the privacy expectations of citizens and the legitimate needs of law enforcement” (EPIC). With the Internet developing intensely, there is a great deal at stake such as the theft of your identification. But where it all begins is when you access the Internet. This is the first step in being aware of your privacy because you go through the process in signing up with an Internet Service Provider (ISP). With this process you have a IP address attached to your ISP. This is the primary step on how your information starts
The Internet is a connection of computers across the world through a network. Its origin dates back to the 1960s when the U.S Military used it for research, but it became more available to the public from the late 1980s. The World Wide Web was created in 1989 and browsers began appearing in the early 1990s. Over the last 24 years, the Internet has enabled people to shop, play, do research, communicate and conduct business online. It has also become cheaper and faster in performing different tasks. As much as the Internet has done immeasurable good to society, it has also dominated people’s lives and brought with it an array of cybercrimes. According to Nicholas Carr in his book The Shallows: How the Internet is Changing the Way we Think, Read and Remember (Carr, 2010). He debates on whether the Internet has done more harm than good. People use the Internet daily to exchange accurate information and constantly personal data such as credit cards, passwords and Social Security numbers are travelling through the network from one computer to another. With security measures put in place on the Internet, personal information remains confidential. But unfortunately, criminals have adapted to innovations in technology, and today, more people are increasingly becoming victims of cybercrime. The Internet has had profound effects on the public, both positive and negative. In this paper we will examine how access to personal information has led to an increase in online and offline crimes. The essay will particularly focus on ecommerce and hacking.
The internet offers high speed connectivity between countries, which allows criminals to commit cybercrimes from anywhere in the world. Due to the demand for the internet to be fast, networks are designed for maximum speed, rather than to be secure or track users (“Interpol” par. 1). This lack of security enables hacker...