The Dark Web håller på att försvinna

Den senaste genomgången av det som kallas The Dark Web visar att många, väldigt många, webbplatser försvunnit bara under det senaste året och att The Dark Web håller på att försvinna.

Undersökningen, The Onion Scan, har kontrollerat 30 000 webbplatser som finns inom ramen för Tors nätverk och kan konstatera att bara drygt 4 400 av dem var uppe. Det betyder att runt 85 procent av alla de undersökta webbplatserna antingen inte var uppe alls eller bara sporadiskt.

In early February the free hosting provider Freedom Hosting II was compromised along with all of the sites it was hosting.

OnionScan data was used as part of the initial analysis to confirm the impact.

While it is still difficult to say how many of the 10,000 sites compromised in the database leak were serving content before the compromise – we can definitely say that over 2000 sites that were part of the OnionScan master list are no longer being hosted – and that this has had a significant impact on the overall size of the onionsphere – an estimate we put at between 15-20% of all dark web site content on the tor network.

An analysis of the database dump revealed that at least 3 of the largest databased in the dump were forums related to sharing and discussing child sexual exploitation – this would appear to align with statements made by the hackers, that it was only after they had gained access to Freedom Hosting II that they decided to destroy the hosting provider and leak the database.

Onion Scan

Attack

Nedgången kan alltså knytas till en attack riktad mot en av The Dark Webs största hostingföretag, Freedom Hosting II. Även Sigaint, ett företag som erbjöd krypterad e.post har lagt ned verksamheten och försvunnit från The Dark Web.