Exploring the World of Deep and Dark Web

Kritika Tripathi Palak Gambhir Gunjan Verma

Department of Computer Science Department of Computer Science Department of Computer Science
Indraprastha College For Women Indraprastha College For Women Indraprastha College For Women
University of Delhi University of Delhi University of Delhi
Email: mail2kriti2000@gmail.com Email: gambhir.pm@gmail.com Email: tmgu2000@gmail.com

Ms.Nikita Jain
Professor
Department of Computer Science
Indraprastha College For Women
University of Delhi
Email: jainnikita1010@gmail.com

Abstract—There exists a world, far beyond the imagination like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat all lie under surface
of the common folks, which remains invisible from the tangible web. Whether we use apps on our phones or watch videos on
world. This brings in the concept of Deep and Dark web. These Netflix, we are accessing the surface web. Even the torrents
webs are used by individuals to go invisible. They require a
special browser like The Onion Router (TOR) because these we download come under surface web. Even though we use
cannot be accessed using normal search engines like Google, all these to a very great extent in our day-to-day lives, we still
Yahoo, etc. TOR helps in keeping the location of the user are using a very small portion of about 3%to 5%of the whole
anonymous by bouncing connected computer’s IP address to web (see Fig 1). [1]
volunteer nodes where it hides the IP address under many
layers, like an ‘onion’. This paper discusses terms like Bitcoin
and Silk Road and how closely they are linked with the dark
web. A comprehensive study of Deep web and Dark web has
been carried out to find out how deep web can be used for
the welfare of the society. The paper also mentions some case
studies and measures(in the the form of acts/policies) taken by
the government to deal with misuse of either of these webs.
A systematic survey was also conducted to know how much
awareness do people have about deep and dark web.
Index Terms—Web, Deep web, Dark web, TOR

I. I NTRODUCTION
th
Since the 20 century, human beings are using web. Have
you ever wondered how much percentage of the web you
have used until now? The answer to this question is truly
very surprising. We have around 4.5 thousand millions of web
browsing people in the world [1] but only a fraction of people
would have at most used 7%to 9%of the web. These statistics
are just a rough estimate and the actual figures might vary.
But it does give us an idea of how we are still left with tons Fig. 1. Bifurcation of Web
of information that needs to be discovered.
We asked the targeted audience in our survey if they know Knowing that fact makes it very intriguing what all lies
about deep and dark web, and we were suprised to know that under the major part that we are unaware of.
only 47.1%knew about it. Also, we asked them if how many For the satisfaction of this curiosity, it is required to do an
people have used either of these web. Only 5.7%have used in-depth study of deep and dark webs. Through this paper,we
either of these webs. would be covering certain topics that are very intriguing.
The whole web is divided into sub-parts. These sub-webs There is a detailed analysis of The Onion Router(TOR),
are Surface web, Deep web and Dark web. The surface web is Bitcoin, and Silkroad. With that being discussed, the paper
the one that most of the population uses. From search engines will be mentioning some of the case studies related to both
like Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Quora to social media websites the webs and the steps taken by certain governments for the
welfare of their country. Hereinafter, the future perspective and
conclusion would be followed.
A. Deep Web
The deep web or the ”hidden web”, as many like to call it, is
a part of the web whose contents are not indexed by standard
web search crawlers. Hence, we cannot access the deep web
just by using Google or Bing. We need a special browser called
TOR or Freenet to access the deep web. Since the deep web
provides much-needed privacy and anonymity, it has become
a haven for harboring all the criminal activities like the illegal
selling of drugs, weapons, etc. But the original purpose of
designing deep web wasn’t to enable such illegal activities to
flourish and prosper, it was made to fulfill the need for secure
communications and to escape censorship to guarantee free
speech to the people. Apart from these activities, the deep
web is also used by many people who want to communicate
their ideas and opinions without having the government to
keep a check on them and by many whistleblowers who want
to share confidential information to the journalists without
leaving any trail. Also, the majority of the deep web sites
are dedicated to ordinary topics like political/personal blogs,
discussion forums, and even radio stations. Almost all the
felonious activities that take place are on the dark web, which
is a very small fraction of the deep web.
B. Dark Web
The dark web is a network of untraceable (invisible from the
outside world) online websites on the Internet. They cannot be
accessed using normal search engines and to access them we
need to use software like The Onion Router. It is used by a lot
of people to keep their activities hidden. The government uses
the dark web to hide their secret official records. Criminals
and terrorists use it for smuggling weapons, drugs, and other
illegal things while being on a private anonymous network so
that their illegal work cannot be traced. Even trafficking and
stalking are being done on a very large scale here. But despite
all these inappropriate uses, there also exists a legitimate side.
For example, People here join Book clubs and gain access
to a boundless world of information that is not accessible
through the surface web. As the name suggests, the dark web
is not safe. Accessing the internet through a TOR network can
expose the users to a large number of advanced hackers in just
a fraction of minutes.
C. The Onion Router(TOR)
TOR is a free and open-source software that allows its
users to surf the internet, chat and send instant messages to
each other anonymously. Tor was originally called the onion
router because it uses a technique called onion routing to
transfer data from one node to another and hides the IP
address of the source. Tor keeps the location of its users
anonymous by encapsulating the messages in multiple layers
of encryption, just like the layers of an onion. Because of the
enhanced anonymity and privacy offered by Tor, it is often
used for illegal and unlawful activities like accessing censored
information, organizing political activities, selling of drugs,
weapons, and stolen credit card numbers, etc.
In our survey, we asked our surveyees if they have heard of
TOR browser and only 26.9%gave a positive response.
1) Onion Routing: Onion Routing is what enables tor to
offer so much anonymity and privacy to its users. We know
that information travels across the internet in the form of
packets. In Tor, these packets have to follow a path established
by Tor, consisting of randomly assigned nodes, to reach their
destination. Your journey to a deep web page stars from your
computer, i.e, the originator. The first node of the circuit,
i.e, the entry point of the circuit, receives the IP address of
your computer and knows that your computer sent a message
using Tor and it needs to forward that message to the second
node. The second node then receives the encrypted message
and establishes a connection with the first node. It can’t read
the message because there is still one layer of encryption
left. Also, the second node cannot determine whether the first
note is the originator or just another node in the circuit. The
originator can then send a message via the first and second
node to a third node( or the exit node) encrypted such that
only the exit node is able to decrypt it. The exit node knows
what the messages say because it has two to peel off the final
layer of encryption while it doesn’t know where the message
came from originally. The exit node then creates a connection
to the webserver where our target page is located. The web
server only knows the IP address of the exit node. In this way,
the source device remains anonymous. [6]
Fig. 2. How does TOR Network Work
2) TOR(The Onion Router) Vs VPN(Virtual Private Net-
work: TOR and VPN both serve the similar purpose of
maintaining internet user’s online anonymity and to evade
firewalls but the way they function is different.
The key difference between VPN and TOR is based on the
way messages are sent within the networks. In VPN network,
when we send a message, message is encrypted and sent
to a specific server. There, the message gets decrypted and
forwarded to its final destination. These messages coming
to our computer are sent to a VPN server. There, they are
encrypted and sent to our computer. The software on our
computer decrypts the message. When a VPN connection is
established, we can continue to use the same server for the
duration. The user in TOR uses spoof geo-location continually
by reconnecting until the exit node is in desired country.
Onion routing used in TOR is a far more complex process
than VPN. It comprises of at least three randomly selected
servers, which a message has to pass through. Before reaching
the final level, messages are encrypted multiple times in TOR.
It is just like peeling an onion.
D. Silk Road
Silk road was the first online darknet market which was
created by Ross William Ulbricht ( alias Dread Pirate Roberts)
in 2011 [4]. Silk Road was originally created to promote
decentralisation of governments and socio-political movements
against law enforcement agencies but later on it people started
using it for the purpose of selling illegal drugs. Since, it was
a part of the dark web, hence it had to be operated as a
Tor hidden service, such that its users were able to browse
it anonymously without any government intervention. Apart
from drugs, people also sold various other illegal items on
silk road, like weapons, counterfeit cash, fake passports, stolen
credit card numbers, etc. The Silk Road lasted for two and
a half years before getting shut down by the FBI in 2013.
Ross William Ulbricht was arrested and sentenced to life in
prison. One analysis showed that Silk Road had nearly 1
million registered users and that it received about 60,000 visits
daily. Also, according to the complaint, Silk Road processed
transactions worth more than 1.2 billion dollars [5]. All the
transactions which took place in Silk Road were in the form of
bitcoins, which is a cryptocurrency used to keep the identity
of the people engaged in selling anonymous.
E. BitCoin
Bitcoin was proposed by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009 [2].
It uses peer-to-peer technology to operate. The various factors
which have contributed significantly to the rise of bitcoin in the
online global trade market are its independence, transparency,
anonymity and its transferability at a very low transaction
fees. Bitcoins are transferred almost instantly as soon as the
transaction is verified on both ends. Bitcoins are created by a
technique called bitcoin mining which is the process of solving
complex mathematical puzzles by devoting the CPU processor
time of computers. Bitcoins offers privacy and anonymity to its
users as whenever a purchase is made using bitcoin, the names
of buyers and sellers are never revealed, only their wallet id’s
are revealed.
Cryptocurrencies are changing the way Internet-connected
global markets interact with each other, clearing away any
barriers related to national currencies and exchange rates.
Cryptocurrencies are revolutionizing the digital trade markets
by creating a free flowing trading system without fees. Since
bitcoins are always available in limited number. That’s why
they never become inflated from its overabundance. That’s
why a lot of people are starting to invest in these bitcoins.
However, one should keep in mind that the value of bitcoins
keep fluctuating because of several external factors. This
fluctuation can be very drastic in certain cases and also there
is no certainty that the value of bitcoins will increase or
not. However, despite all this, bitcoin emerged as the best
performing currency of 2015 using the US Dollar Index [3]
and its demand is increasing day by day.
II. A DVANTAGES OF D EEP AND DARK WEB
Deep and dark web offer a lot of advantages. First and the
most important, it provides anonymity to all its users. It lets
the users access censored data, private clouds, banned websites
and social media profiles. Highly confidential and important
databases like medical records, government reports, and legal
documents related to the law can be found on the deep web.
These webs offer a ton of opportunities to nerdy people as
well, as there are a vast number of virtual libraries available
on the deep and dark web waiting to be explored. The deep
and dark web has a complete ocean of information related
to academics, research, and what not, which its users can
access. Not only private companies, but even organizations
like NASA and ISRO store their confidential information and
valuable databases on the deep and dark web. With the help
of Deep web, we can also perform data mining and data
scraping. It also allows journalists to do their job without
any fear of government surveillance. Apart from all this, there
are various forums and platforms available for games such as
chess and book clubs that allow people with similar interests
to network with each other. Plus, by using the deep and dark
web efficiently, one can gain infinite amount of knowledge
that would not be accessible otherwise.
III. C ASE S TUDIES AND A RTICLES RELATED TO D EEP
AND DARK W EB
Some case studies are worth mentioning which gives us
an insight into the numerous cases in which darknet is being
misused for a very long time. “Dark net markets: the eBay of
drug dealing”, an article by Jamie Bartlett that was published
by, “The Guardian” [7] newspaper tells us how drugs were
being sold over darknet on a very large scale even before eBay
or Amazon existed and how this illegal work is exponentially
increasing. In another article “Inside the dark web: The truth
is there is a lot of evil out there” by ”The Irish Times” [8]
focuses on the darker side of the dark web and gives us an
insight into how anonymity can prove to be very dangerous if
given into wrong hands. “Inside the dark web’s online murder-
for-hire scams” [9] gives a very appalling impression of how
crowdfunded assassination markets are live online in the same
world as we are living in. The only difference in ours and
their world is that those people who are running these are all
anonymous. While there are also case studies like “The not so
dark side of the darknet: a qualitative study” [10] by Mihnea
Mirea and Victoria Wang published on 07 August 2018 which
mention how activism and journalism can be used as a weapon
to unleash everything in repressive countries. It also mentions
the positive uses of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Hence, we
can very well agree with the fact that darknet also has its pros
and cons. Despite having some rare, less-darker sides, darknet
still proves to be very fateful to the concerned users.
IV. F UTURE P ERSPECTIVE
From all the details mentioned in the research paper, it
is pretty clear that there is a serious need to tackle the
increasing cases of crimes done using these webs. Although
the government is making numerous laws, still a strict enforce-
ment of these laws and acts is the need of the hour. Along
with this, some other things should also be implemented by
the government apart from the laws. First of all, all those
websites which lets its users download the TOR browser must
be blocked. This will in turn help in controlling numerous
illegal activities happening out there on dark web, which
even the Financial Bureau of Investigation(FBI) is not able
to monitor. Apart from this, as the deep and dark web is
accessed through the TOR browser, which works in a way
that helps in maintaining the anonymity to a very large extent,
hence it becomes a very tough task to monitor all the activities
happening over that network. But still, there are various highly
skilled hackers out there on these webs who can hack the users
within the matter of a couple of minutes. We would suggest
that the government should hire a bunch of such hackers who
can work undercover on the dark web, so that those doing
illegal work can be hacked and stopped from exploiting these
webs. Even there are agencies out there in many parts of the
world who employ tactics that maintain the privacy of the
normal users while unmasking the criminals. Such agencies
should be encouraged more and more. These small steps can
bring about a great change and can help in creating a safe
environment over the internet by letting normal users enjoy
their privacy without any fear.
V. C ONCLUSION
Through this research paper, a detailed study of the Deep
and Dark web has been carried out. Questions like what these
webs are, who are it’s users and how are these webs accessed,
are some common queries that have been answered through
this paper. A comprehensive discussion on how TOR can be
used for browsing the deep and dark web anonymously has
been done. There is also a mention of the case studies that give
us an insight into how the dark web is being misused, while
in the beginning, it was intentionally made for good deeds.
Through our survey, we gathered some rough statistics that
depict the extent to which people are aware of the deep and
the dark web and how they think it can be beneficial for the
young generation. It is pretty clear that the dark web is being
misused for the purpose of selling stolen credit cards, forged
documents, stalking, child trafficking, terrorism, drug selling,
and black marketing, and that too on a very large scale. Albeit,
the anonymity that both these webs offer turns out to be rather
very beneficial for some bunch of people. Take for example the
entrepreneurs that carry out very demanding activities like data
scraping and data mining using the deep web. Furthermore,
through the deep and dark web, Journalists have been able
to discover some crucial pieces of information and necessary
news, that one would not be able to find otherwise, without
going anonymous. Then there are whistleblowers who expose
the wrongdoing of government or private sector organizations.
Thanks to the deep web, these whistleblowers are now able
to work actively for the welfare of the world, without any
fear of getting exposed. These webs are even used for various
academic and research purposes by various people. As we
know, this topic is very vast and our research is still going on.
Intellectuals from all around the world are still discovering
new aspects each and every day that are very remarkable. So
as a conclusion we can state that this research is a small-scale
exercise. To get a better understanding, one needs to constantly
keep exploring technicalities related to the deep and dark web.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We would like to express our special thanks of gratitude
to our principal Dr. Babli Moitra Saraf who gave us this
golden opportunity of doing the research paper on the topic
“Exploring the world of Deep and Dark web” as well as to
our guide teacher Ms. Nikita Jain, who was a providing us
with support and inspiration throughout. Under her proper
guidance, we were able to learn a lot of new things and
explored a different world of web. Also, we would like to
thank Mrs.Shikha Agrawal who helped us a lot in the initial
stages. A special thanks to Varsha KR and Nikita Jangid for
helping us out with the research and related work.
R EFERENCES
[1] https://www.internetworldstats.com/emarketing.htm
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin
[3] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316656878A nA nalysiso fC ryptocurrencyB
[4] https://www.deepweb-sites.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-silk-road/
[5] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SilkR oad( marketplace)
[6] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor( anonymityn etwork)
[7] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/oct/05/dark-net-markets-
drugs-dealing-ebay
[8] https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-radio-web/inside-the-dark-web-the-
truth-is-there-is-a-lot-of-evil-out-there-1.3653092
[9] https://thehustle.co/assassination-market-bitcoin-murder-scam/
[10] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41284-018-0150-5