Besides stolen credit card details, illegal drugs and child pornography, the Dark Web is also host to a murder-for-hire website, Assassination Market, where users could crowdfund assassinations through Bitcoin.
The New York Daily News reports that many of the transactions on the Dark Web use cryptocurrency which securely transfers decentralized digital currency person to person over the internet, making it unnecessary to open a bank account.
Unlike conventional currency, Bitcoin, invented in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto, is not linked to or issued by any central authority like a government which makes it easier for the underworld to transact business in the Dark Net.
Those who access the Dark Web install special anonymizing tools that keeps traffic secret. Among these tools are 12P Network, Freenet Software and the Onion Router (Tor) browser. Tor was actually created by the U.S. Navy to protect intelligence communications. It uses onion URLs and is legally downloadable for free similar to a regular browser.
By using those software, the user's location and identity when they visit a website remain hidden. Because of the secrecy involving the Dark Web, Aamir Lakhani, senior security strategist of Fortinet, estimates only 30 percent of the Dark Web is visible to its users. Others say it could be 1,000 times bigger than the World Wide Web.
The version of eBay and Amazon in the Dark Web is AlphaBay where users also register if they want to trade in drugs, fraud and counterfeit products and services. Although the market site is trying to avoid selling weapons, firearms and ammunition could be bought from this market site. Also available are stolen premium Spotify accounts for as low as $2 and Netflix accounts for 50 cents.
To undermine the Dark Web, there is a suggestion from law enforcement agencies to bring down the value of drugs traded on the portal by purchasing some and then posting bad reviews, say researchers from the University of Cyprus and Boston University in a paper. That study was presented at the 2015 INFORMS Conference on Information Systems and Technology in Philadelphia on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, reports Motherboard.