Exploring and analyzing the dark Web: A new alchemy

Faizan, Mohd; Khan, Raees Ahmad

doi:10.5210/fm.v24i5.9473

Cited by 38 publications

(24 citation statements)

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“…In contrast, while the majority of hosted Onion/Hidden Services are often not per se illegal ( 28 , 30 ), user demand for this content tends to suggest that illicit use of Onion/Hidden Services predominates ( 6 ). First, one 2015 study investigating site visits to Onion/Hidden Services found that roughly 82% of requests over a 6-month observation period went to child abuse imagery sites, although this period also corresponded with a major FBI investigation into the Playpen child abuse imagery site ( 7 ).…”

Section: Data Material and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The potential harms of the Tor anonymity network cluster disproportionately in free countries

Jardine

Lindner

Owenson³

2020

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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The Tor anonymity network allows users to protect their privacy and circumvent censorship restrictions but also shields those distributing child abuse content, selling or buying illicit drugs, or sharing malware online. Using data collected from Tor entry nodes, we provide an estimation of the proportion of Tor network users that likely employ the network in putatively good or bad ways. Overall, on an average country/day, ∼6.7% of Tor network users connect to Onion/Hidden Services that are disproportionately used for illicit purposes. We also show that the likely balance of beneficial and malicious use of Tor is unevenly spread globally and systematically varies based upon a country’s political conditions. In particular, using Freedom House’s coding and terminological classifications, the proportion of often illicit Onion/Hidden Services use is more prevalent (∼7.8%) in “free” countries than in either “partially free” (∼6.7%) or “not free” regimes (∼4.8%).

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Section: Data Material and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The potential harms of the Tor anonymity network cluster disproportionately in free countries

Jardine

Lindner

Owenson³

2020

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Third, the Dark Web has a wide variety of functions, many of which do not involve drugs at all and are in fact not even illegal within the United States. Categorizations of available Darknet .onion hidden services have consistently found large volumes of legal content on the Tor-hosted Dark Web (Faizan & Khan, 2019;Moore & Rid, 2016;Owen & Savage, 2015), which also mirrors studies of single Dark Web social networking sites (Gehl, 2016(Gehl, , 2018. Indeed, increased political repression correlates with actual Tor usage rates at a national level, suggesting that the Dark Web is a powerful tool of rights-based expression (Jardine, 2018b).…”

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 85%

The Dark Web and cannabis use in the United States: Evidence from a big data research design

Jardine

Lindner

2020

International Journal of Drug Policy

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Background: Cannabis is the most commonly sold drug on cryptomarkets. Because of the anonymity-granting functions of Tor, no study has traced the within-country effect of the Dark Web on cannabis consumption patterns. This article uses a big data research design to examine the association between revealed interest in the Dark Web and self-reported cannabis use within US states from 2011 when Silk Road launched to 2015 when Operation Onymous shuttered nine markets. Methods: This study uses mixed effects ordinary least squared regressions to analyse U.S. state/year panel data, using robust standard errors to correct for heteroscedasticity. Marginal effect plots illustrate substantive effects. The dataset consists of state-level variables drawn from the Uniform Crime Report (UCR), the American Community Survey (ACS), the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the Correlates of State Policy Project, and the Bureau of Justice Statistics Justice Expenditure and Employment Extracts. Data for the Dark Web interest measure are drawn from Google Trends. The proxy for Dark Web interest is an index of eight Dark Web related search terms. Results:The regression analysis indicates that Dark Web interest in US states positively correlates with cannabis consumption rates overall and among older adults (26+), but not youth (12-17) or younger adults (18-25). Additionally, Dark Web interest is positively associated with more frequent cannabis usage rates (use in the past month, but not in the past year) overall and among older adults, but not among youth or younger adults. Interacting Dark Web interest with state-level legalization regimes indicates that the association between Dark Web interest and cannabis consumption in the past year is no different in medically legalized states and amplified in states with recreational legalization. Lastly, the Dark Web interest term does not correlate with first time cannabis either overall or for any age category.

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“…Research papers N. of papers Content classification [23], [24], [25], [26], [9], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31], [32], [33], [34], [35], [36], [37], [38] 17…”

Section: Research Fieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast, Savage and Owen [32] return to manual study and classification, suggesting that given the variety and complex technical nature of some content, automatic classifiers would be insufficient, due to the difficulty of interpreting the context completely. Other documentation of a manual classification reviewing 3480 HS is by Faizan and Khan [28], but they claim that only 38% of the servers found offer illegal services.…”

Section: Content Classificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tor Hidden Services: A Systematic Literature Review

Trujillo¹,

Ruiz‐Martínez²

2021

Preprint

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Anonymous communications networks were born to protect the privacy of our communications, preventing censorship and traffic analysis. The most famous anonymous communication network is Tor. This anonymous communication network provides some interesting features, among them, we can mention user’s IP location or Tor Hidden Services (THS) as a mechanism to conceal the location of servers, mainly, web servers. THS is an important research field in Tor. However, there is a lack of reviews that sump up main findings and research challenges. In this article we present a systematic literature review that aims to offer a comprehensive view on the research made on Tor Hidden services presenting the state of the art and the different research challenges to be addressed. This review has been developed from a selection of 57 articles and present main findings and advances regarding Tor Hidden Services, limitations found, and future issues to be investigated.

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Exploring and analyzing the dark Web: A new alchemy

Cited by 38 publications

References 0 publications

The potential harms of the Tor anonymity network cluster disproportionately in free countries

The potential harms of the Tor anonymity network cluster disproportionately in free countries

The Dark Web and cannabis use in the United States: Evidence from a big data research design

Tor Hidden Services: A Systematic Literature Review

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