The Darknet And Its Dangers

1. The Darknet And Its Dangers Darknet market sites offer all types of illegal goods and services (drugs, false papers, counterfeits, data, money laundering). On these sites, users are very sensitive to their anonymity and security. The absence of a legislative framework has been compensated by the implementation of protection technologies: Tor and Bitcoin for anonymity, the development of a virtual identity specific to Darknet (on several sites) to increase the reliability of sellers, implementing drastic security measures to protect computers. These measures can be adapted on the public Internet to improve security and protection of the private sphere. There is a part of the Internet that cannot be accessed with a normal browser. This is the Darknet and there are all kinds of illegal goods. You can buy drugs, false papers, counterfeits, credit card numbers or malware. To access this part of the Internet, users take great care, because they are aware of the dangers involved. The first danger is to be identified. Given the illegal aspect of the goods traded, the actors (sellers, buyers, market operators) wish to remain anonymous. This is why these sites are not operated on the public Internet. We use an encrypted network, often Tor (The Onion Router), designed to anonymize communications, and a specific browser, for example the Tor- browser. The sites have a specific domain name (in .onion for Tor) which does not correspond to an address on the Internet (IP address), but to an address in the encrypted network. Therefore, the police cannot locate the site using its IP address. As all users use the encrypted network, their IP address also remains hidden.

2. Payments should also remain anonymous. Users therefore make all their payments with a cryptocurrency (usually Bitcoin). As for delivery, a user must give a physical address, there would be a risk, when the police manage to take control of the site that they can access all contact details of the users. This is why communications between customers and sellers are always encrypted. The customer uses the public key that the seller publishes on his page, to encrypt the information he sends to the seller. Only the seller has the private key to decrypt the message. The buyer's address is therefore known only to the seller, who undertakes to delete it as soon as possible. Since the seller and the buyer are anonymous, they cannot file a complaint. The second danger incurred is for a user to be cheated by his partner. This is the case of the seller who does not deliver, or who delivers a poor quality product, or the buyer who does not pay. Since the seller and the buyer are anonymous, they cannot file a complaint. There is no court on the Darknet. Mechanisms have therefore been put in place to avoid these cases. The sites have reputation systems in place that allow a buyer to rate the transaction they have made. The reputation of a user will depend as on e- Commerce sites on the turnover and rating of buyers. Where the Darknet differs from the classic Internet is that "reputation" is transferable from site to site. As sites are regularly seized and deactivated by the police, any reputation established on a site A could disappear with this site. This is not the case. Another site B copies the reputation of the sellers of site A. It just remains to verify that the users with the same pseudonym are indeed the same. This is done using the seller's public key (used to communicate encrypted as seen above). It serves as the Darknet ID card and remains the same on all sites. If the same nickname uses the same public key, it's

3. the same person, so you can transfer your reputation. This allows a new site to start with sellers who already have a good reputation. To secure the transfer of money, there are two mechanisms. Either we use a trusted third party (escrow in English), the site for example, to which the buyer transfers the money to the order and which releases this money when the transaction is finalized. Either we use a mechanism of Bitcoin multisig. In one such transaction, three people (the seller, the buyer, and the site) together create a Bitcoin account to which money is transferred. Then in order to have the money two of the three people have to agree. Normally when the buyer finalizes the transaction, the site gives its agreement and the seller can have his money. In the event of a problem, the site remains the arbiter of the transaction. In the event of a site fault, both buyer and seller can still access their money. Visiting a Darknet site with a non-dedicated, hardened computer would be suicidal. The third danger is undoubtedly being a victim of a cyber attack. Darknet players all have very different interests. Site operators may want to destroy competing sites. They are also victims of blackmail attempts. Attackers bombard request sites and detonate them under load; this attack is known by the acronym DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service). The bypass strategy is to have lots of access points at all times and be able to shut down those that are attacked quickly enough. The sent documents (pdf, programs, etc.) can also be used to spread malware. The people working on these sites are all criminals and some are cyber criminals, they have the know-how to spread such programs. Other actors are also very dangerous for the users of the Darknet, it is the forces of intelligence and the police force which continually try to penetrate and / or dismantle these sites. They have the means to develop quality malware and have a very high interest in dealing

4. with these sites. Visiting a Darknet site with a computer not specifically dedicated and reinforced would be suicidal. People active on the Darknet all use a specific browser (the Tor-browser) and should also use a system in the form of a virtual machine in which to contain possible contamination. This virtual machine should only be used for darknet use and reset very regularly. "Crime as a Service" The Dark Web is a real danger to society. It is used by criminals for drug trafficking, counterfeit paper trafficking, counterfeit money trafficking. But above all, it allows a new form of crime, "Crime as a Service". The criminals are no longer in an integrated structure, but each one takes care of only one task in the cyber-criminal chain (discovery of security vulnerabilities, writing of an exploit, maintenance of a malware deployment tool, maintenance of a net bot, botnet rental, money laundering). Everyone sells their services on the network and can focus on their core business. The Darknet gives us to see a hyper secure ecosystem, in which technical and organizational solutions are pushed to their maximum to secure transactions despite a very inhospitable environment. The mechanisms put in place on the Darknet are adaptable in high-risk environments and for which levels of anonymity and security are required. We can see, however, that even people with very high motivation and good technical knowledge manage to get caught. Security and complete anonymity are very difficult to obtain.