• atulsharma.cse@gmail.com
• October 27, 2022
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The Dark web and cyber security are two ends of the same thing, it seems just as legit, right? Well, it isn’t entirely true neither is it false. Putting these two words together seems like such a paradox. 
Let’s now have a look at what is Dark Web and what is Cyber Security. How are they related?
In this blog, we shall read about this in detail.
The Dark web or darknet as we commonly know is a part of the internet, which is rather difficult to access, in the absence of proper tools and authorizations. 

The risk of a daily user, taking a walk on the dark side is pretty high as daily web surfing is also not safe from the darknet. Hence, it is very essential to devise measures that ensure, safety from exposure to the darknet.  The threat, it poses is humongous in nature.

What is Dark Web?

The Dark web or the darknet as we know it is one of the three words of the World Wide Web. 

• The Clearnet or the surface web is part of the world wide web and is what most people use every day through search engines. It is a very considerable yet tiny fraction, of the web (5-10%) approx. 
• No passwords are required, to establish a connection to the surface web. A user can simply search and browse.
• It is inclusive, of all search results, from engines like Google, Bing, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube etc. 
• The second one in line is the Deep web. The deep web is beyond the surface web, search engines are not sufficient in indexing them and also these sites need authentication to access them. 
• Last, of all, the Dark web is a small subset about 5% of the deep web (approx). Its access can only be with the help of a special authentication. 
• The Dark Web includes many other overlay networks which could be accessed with a set of particular software/configurations. 
• The softwares and configurations include peer-to-peer networks and many anonymous networks like I2P, Freenet, Synide, OneSwarm etc.

What is Cyber Security?

Cyber security refers to the practices that we undertake in order to ensure security for data and all other data-based interactions that are being carried out. Cyber security is of varied kinds, but all serve this common motive of trying to defend the systems from data theft, ransomware and other cyber threats. 

Cyber crimes are so common these days, that the need for cyber security is rising each minute. In this blog, we shall read about how the dark web can aid or affect cyber security.

Dark Web and Cyber Crime:

The Dark web often gets immediately associated with cybercrime, but there are many things that are illegal in nature for example scams etc.

• Scams: 

Scams can be defined as dishonest, misleading schemes etc that are made to swindle money out of people mostly, it cloud be done to extract valuable information. These scams occur between, users, between users and site administrators, and between buyers and sellers as well. 

• Theft of Data: 

Data gets stolen, very often, which tends to end up in places, it shouldn’t or places not meant for it.
Data gets sold, resold, and traded. The data gets landed in certain open forums or large market places, it is not designated to be in.

Dark Web and its benefits:

There are many negative repercussions of the Dark web but there are benefits, as well, as there are two perspectives. So let’s have a look at the upside of the Dark Web:

• Whistleblowers.
• Journalists, want to protect information that can pose a threat to their lives. 
• Activists, any kind of information that can cause national or international levels of disruption.
• Cybersecurity experts in the field of law enforcement make the best use of the dark web as they can store information that is vital in nature. 
• Law enforcement can access the particular areas where the dark web has been appearing.

What makes the Dark Web so important in regard to cyber security?

The Dark web is becoming one of the most trending topics, in today’s times. That’s because it has become vital as it is growing to become a major threat. The experts in the field of cyber security are always on their toes to track the next big cyber attack. 

These cyber-attacks take place very frequently all over the globe. These attacks take can be staged anywhere all over the world. It is essential to know about these attacks and the threat to cyber security that is being posed. As there are billions of people at the risk all over the globe. 

Hence, it is equally, important to give due attention to the darknet or the Dark web. As it has become one of the busiest places for hackers to carry their illegal activities. 

The Dark web has become very popular along with the deep web, TOR network and i2p network. It happens to enjoy this popularity as it can hide a user’s identity, by employing strong and robust encryption technologies. This encryption technology is employed to hide sophisticated computer viruses which happen to be targeted at hackers and cybercriminals. 

The former is considered a basic necessity by many organisations. This ensures that the data which is sent over the internet is efficiently secured from any kind of malicious hackers. 

This increases the security of all things related to the cyber world as cybercriminals face difficulty in tracking any business customer activities and also stops them from reading any kind of confidential information.

 This creates an issue for them in identifying customers easily and accessing their bank accounts. Which makes it an absolutely perfect, place for hackers of all kinds. The Dark web is a perfect place for hackers. They have been using this space to launch cyber attacks from here, for a while now.

The Dark web, an attention seeker for Cyber Security Experts.

Browsing through the regular web, users are prone to access all kinds of content and information from any website. It becomes easy to access any kind of prohibited information or so to say illegal information.  This can be useful in extracting any kind of information regarding topics of national importance like illegal drugs, weapons, malware and other kinds of banned items as well.

Scope of the Dark web in Cyber Security :

The scope of the Dark web in matters of cyber security is massive. There are some legitimate purposes, for both cyber criminals and also people who tend to go after them and utilise this knowledge to counter the former mentioned cyber crimes.
The most common and well-known ways to benefit from the dark web are: 

• It can be utilised to gather information from hackers of any kind, by having access to overhearing their conversations. 
• The dark web happens to be a set of the very deep website which is difficult to access or close to inaccessible by the means of the regular internet browser. 
• Hence these sites need encryption or specialty software. We can get ahead of cybercriminals by accessing these links with the help of access to the dark web.