Uncovered | The Dark Web Black Market | Best Documentary (2021)

Uncovered | The Dark Web Black Market | Best Documentary (2021)

A darknet market is a commercial website on the dark web that operates via darknets such as Tor or I2P. They function primarily as black markets, selling or brokering transactions involving drugs, cyber-arms, weapons, counterfeit currency, stolen credit card details, forged documents, unlicensed pharmaceuticals,steroids, and other illicit goods as well as the sale of legal products.

Commercial darknet markets mediate transactions for illegal goods and typically use Bitcoin as payment. These markets have attracted significant media coverage, starting with the popularity of Silk Road and Diabolus Market and its subsequent seizure by legal authorities. Silk Road was one of the first dark web marketplaces that emerged in 2011 and has allowed for the trading of weapons and identity fraud resources. These markets have no protection for its users and can be closed down at any time by authorities. Despite the closures of these marketplaces, others pop up in their place. As of 2020, there have been at least 38 active dark web market places.

Examination of price differences in Dark web markets versus prices in real life or over the World Wide Web have been attempted as well as studies in the quality of goods received over the Dark web. One such study was performed on Evolution, one of the most popular crypto-markets active from January 2013 to March 2015. Although it found the digital information, such as concealment methods and shipping country, "seems accurate", the study uncovered issues with the quality of illegal drugs sold in Evolution, stating that, "... the illicit drugs purity is found to be different from the information indicated on their respective listings." Less is known about consumer motivations for accessing these marketplaces and factors associated with their use.

Hacking groups and services
Many hackers sell their services either individually or as a part of groups.Such groups include xDedic, hackforum, Trojanforge, Mazafaka, dark0de and the TheRealDeal darknet market. Some have been known to track and extort apparent pedophiles. Cyber crimes and hacking services for financial institutions and banks have also been offered over the Dark web. Attempts to monitor this activity have been made through various government and private organizations, and an examination of the tools used can be found in the Procedia Computer Science journal. Use of Internet-scale DNS Distributed Reflection Denial of Service (DRDoS) attacks have also been made through leveraging the Dark Web. There are many scam .onion sites also present which end up giving tools for download that are infected with trojan horses or backdoors.

Financing and fraud
Scott Dueweke the president and founder of Zebryx Consulting states that Russian electronic currency such as WebMoney and Perfect Money are behind the majority of the illegal actions. In April 2015, Flashpoint received a 5 million dollar investment to help their clients gather intelligence from the Deep and Dark web. There are numerous carding forums, PayPal and Bitcoin trading websites as well as fraud and counterfeiting services. Many such sites are scams themselves. Phishing via cloned websites and other scam sites are numerous, with darknet markets often advertised with fraudulent URLs.

Illegal pornography
The type of content that has the most popularity on the dark web is illegal pornography, more specifically, child pornography. About 80% of web traffic is related to accessing child pornography despite it being difficult to find, even on the dark web. A website called Lolita City, that has since been taken down, contained over 100 GB of child pornographic media and had about 15,000 members
There is regular law enforcement action against sites distributing child pornography – often via compromising the site and tracking users' IP addresses. In 2015, the FBI investigated and took down a website called Playpen. At the time, Playpen was the largest child pornography website on the dark web with over 200,000 members. Sites use complex systems of guides, forums and community regulation. Other content includes sexualised torture and killing of animals and revenge porn.

Social media
Within the dark web, there exists emerging social media platforms similar to those on the World Wide Web, this is known as the Dark Web Social Network (DWSN). The DWSN works a like a regular social networking site where members can have customizable pages, have friends, like posts, and blog in forums. Facebook and other traditional social media platforms have begun to make dark-web versions of their websites to address problems associated with the traditional platforms and to continue their service in all areas of the World Wide Web. Unlike Facebook, the privacy policy of the DWSN requires that members are to reveal absolutely no personal information and remain anonymous.

#Uncovered
#Documentary
#2021