I see what you did. You just got to know about something called the dark web and suddenly more firewood got added to your curiosity. You researched about it a little and stumbled upon the iceberg analogy. However, you still haven’t found an article that would give you practically sound advice on how to get into and use the dark web? If that is the case then this series of articles is for you
In this article, you will learn: How to access the dark web through onion routing.
The dark web is a collection of webpages that regular browsers just cannot reach. You can technically use other browsers that use onion routing like brave browser and waterfox, however, I would advise against it. When someone chooses to be on the dark web, anonymity is the top priority and since TOR is the biggest project out of its alternatives and is the go-to for onion routing hence it has a reputation on the line. As someone who has been on the dark web for the last 1.5 years, I would advise strictly against it. Your privacy is the top priority on the dark web and it isn’t worth testing the alternatives.
But what is onion routing?
Just like how onions have layers, your connection on the TOR browser will also have layers (3 to be exact). Your connection has to bounce from 3 proxy servers randomly from the world then finally arriving to you.
This makes it slow but makes you untraceable in case you are unwilling to expose yourself (more about it in a future article). This is very different from a VPN since a VPN utilities just 1 layer of private connection
Download TOR from this link and this link only. Many ads try to trick you into installing the unofficial one
Fun fact: Your internet service provider(ISP) can see all the websites you connect to but only the domains for example youtube.com, medium.com, and google.com. However, if you connect to a website that starts with ‘HTTP’ rather than ‘HTTPS’, then they can see everything you do on it. When you use either TOR or VPN, your ISP can only see that you have connected to the respective service.
Accessing TOR using bridges
Tor is legal to use in the majority of countries. However, the TOR project has been banned in countries like North Korea, China and Russia. So as not to let the citizens of those countries lose access to anonymity, TOR bridges are widely used. They hide the fact that you use TOR in the first place. Bridges can even be used if you are worried that using TOR is suspicious(personal choice). To get bridges go to https://bridges.torproject.org/
copy the bridges>open TOR browser>Tor network settings>Enter custom bridges> paste.
A bridge, however, doesn’t guarantee more anonymity than using the regular nodes so it isn’t required.
How you can still be traced even if you don’t give out any information
Look at the chart where I explained how TOR works. The answer to this question comes from that chart itself.
The entry node is where all the internet from your computer enters, it knows who you are but not the traffic you send and where it is going
The relay is the connection between the entry and exit nodes, it only sees the 2 nodes. It has no clue who you are and where the final traffic goes.
If someone takes control of the first 2 nodes, they only see who you are, not where you are going or what you are sending.
The third node is where things get interesting:
The exit node is the node which connects to the final site. It doesn’t know who you are but knows where the traffic is going, there is another point of failure to be taken into account to de-anonymize you
Snoop point: The connection between the exit node and the webpage is termed the snoop point since if you aren’t connected to HTTPS, your connection is unencrypted, meaning all your data is visible to anyone who can eavesdrop on the exit node (ISP, Lawyers, System admins and even the FBI).
Word of advice: Never connect to HTTP sites at all, they are never worth your anonymity.
When someone is monitoring the entry and exit node and if you connect to an insecure website then They know who you are, where you are going and what you are doing. This is when you are completely de-anonymized. In case you send uniquely identifiable information to an insecure website then eavesdroppers don’t even need to monitor the entry node.
This is very rare and such a thing will only happen if you are a high priority on the FBI watchlist. If you are smart enough to connect only to HTTPS websites, eavesdroppers can only see the website you connect to. This is why TOR is your best bet for anonymity. A (bad) workaround for this is to use a VPN with TOR
VPN with TOR
Your internet traffic bounces 3 nodes before reaching you, which gives you wonderful anonymity but how about 4? The thing is that more layers don’t mean more security it also severely affects your internet speed. TOR over VPN is indeed a risk since you have to trust your VPN service, which is an oxymoron. VPNs cannot be trusted. They have been known to log user data even if they tell you they won’t. There is also no way to confirm their claims. Another strong counter argument which says that if you are a very high priority suspect then the FBI can just subpoena the VPN service making this really useless. In case you ignore this piece of advice, use Mullvad VPN which has a reputation to protect and is open-sourced (you can figure out what information it sends to its server). You can also make your VPN but it comes with another risk, can you trust the VPN platform you use?
For those reasons, I do not recommend using TOR over VPN.
Operating system to use for the maximum anonymity
As I have said earlier, for someone who wants to jump into the dark-web-verse, anonymity is the top priority. This means that you cannot trust proprietary operating systems as well. You should never use Windows or Mac operating systems since their source code isn’t public and we do not know what they store. I have made an entire series of blog posts on why mega corps can never be trusted with privacy and this is an inviolable rule of thumb. Luckily, I will give you more practical advice than changing your entire operating system to Linux. After enough research and experience, I can say with certain confidence that you should use Tails OS for maximum privacy. Download link: https://tails.boum.org/. Tails comes with pre-installed software like one of the most secure password managers (KeypassXC), onion share which can be used to send files using TOR, Pidigen which is a chat service through the TOR network and many more important pieces of software. To give you a summary of what you should expect:
- You can run it beside your host operating system on a USB which doesn’t compromise on performance (live booting)
- Free in terms of money and free in terms of freedom (source code is customisable)
- Straightforward to use after installation and you don’t need to whack your head against the wall to figure out how to use it.
- Already has TOR configured with HTTPS only mode and ublock origin(disables Javascript and other unique identifyables).
- Comes with a Firewall which disables any application (or virus) from connecting to the open internet without onion routing, even updates are through onion routing.
- After shutdown and restart, it forgets everything about you unless you make an encrypted storage known as persistence storage. This means all viruses last only 1 session at max.
- It doesn’t store anything on your hard drive, meaning no viruses and no trace of TOR at all.
- It live boots and stores all information on the RAM of the computer. It is better than other live operating systems since it forgets faster, making it difficult to perform a forensic attack on your computer if compromised by sophisticated adversaries. See cold boot attack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_boot_attack
- Built-in encryption software.
- Debian based, meaning stable updates
the best video on how to install tails I could find:
Part 2 will cover how to browse the dark web. Until next time!
