Accessing the deep web

What is it?

The deep web is basically the part of the internet that is not indexed by standard search engines such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc. It has been reported that the deep web is 400 to 550 times bigger than the surface web. One way you can access the deep web is with a tor browser which uses an onion routing protocol that provides anonymity.

Why use it?

People that do not know much about the deep web or what little they've heard would most likely say the deep web is only used for illegal activities which is completely untrue. For example: People with blogs that want to write about their opinions without getting in trouble with censorship laws in their country can use tor browsers to maintain anonymity, write, and post their opinions without anyone knowing who they are. This anonymity is what attracts the cyber criminals to the dark web. The dark web is just the part the of the deep web that contains illegal content, products, and services.

Onion routing protocol

The onion routing protocol is what the tor browsers use to protect your anonymity. The way it works is like a proxy server. A proxy server relays your IP address through a server, adding another step in your data packet so when it's traced back it sees the proxy server IP and not your home address. Your IP can still get traced back from the proxy server to your computer. What an onion routing protocol does is use a network of nodes (points of connection) and encrypts your data packets at every step in the routing process so no other node can see what your sending. At the end is where the node is finally decrypted and sent to the final destination.

The part of this process that becomes vulnerable is the end when the node is decrypted. In the words of Elliot Alderson (Mr. Robot) “Whoever is in control of the exit nodes is also the one in control of the traffic, which makes me the one in control.” this is the single point of failure in the process as shown in this video clip of Mr. Robot in the first episode.

Accessing the deep web

Note: In Linux if you try installing the tor browser in your root account you will get this message.

You should create another user.

• adduser tor
• enter in the password you choose, hit return, enter it again and hit return.

• you can skip changing the user information by hitting enter for every value and then type “y” and hit enter

Now that we have that setup we can continue on with the installation.

Accessing the deep web is as easy as downloading google chrome onto your desktop.

• The first thing you need to do is go to https://www.torproject.org/ and make your way to the download page
• Download the tor browser (make sure you download the one that is compatible with your operating system)
• Either download the 32 bit or 64 bit file based on your computer.
• You’ll need to extract the file and place it in your documents

In your tor browser folder you should see something similar to this.

• click on the tor browser setup file

the tor browser splash screen should come up and for most cases you can connect directly.

• If you don’t know any onion links you can go to thehiddenwiki.org and it will give you a list of hidden wiki links there

This is what a regular link looks like

This is what an onion link looks like

• As you can see there's no real naming methodology to these links, just random numbers and letters.

From there you can make your way to different pages.

Warning: Do not go clicking around random links without knowing what they are because you might find yourself on a site that you don’t want to be on