The dark Web is composed of sites called hidden services. The detail working of Onion routing and Tor browser can be obtained from their official Web site (Tor Project, at ). This hides the actual IP address of the client and enables a given user to browse the Web without being tracked.
The data is encrypted at each node when it passes through the circuit. The Tor browser uses onion routing technique (Dingledine, et al., 2004) where a circuit consisting of three nodes is established between the client and the server for communication. The same Tor network hosts the dark Web within it. It provides its users with a platform that enables them to remain anonymous while surfing the Internet. The Onion Router or Tor is the most common tool to access the dark Web. The dark Web is a subset of the Internet that is hidden within the encrypted layer below the regular Web and requires special tools to access it. Russian was the leading language of the dark Web after English and hidden services having forums and blogs were predominantly present over other content. Non-English content was also studied and categorized. The results indicate that a large share of hidden services provide illegal content along with a large number of scam sites.
We analyzed the dataset and manually classify the data into 31 different categories to identify the nature of content available on the dark Web. In this paper, we have collected the addresses of about 25,742 hidden services and analyze the data for 6,227 available services with the help of custom-made crawler in Python. While Tor hidden services provide a platform for uncensored ventures and a free expression of thoughts, they are outnumbered by grey activities taking place. These activities include distribution of child pornography, access to illegal drugs, and the sale of weapons. These hidden services are used to carry out activities that are otherwise illegal and unethical on the surface Web. The Tor network also hosts hidden services which constitute the infamous dark Web. The Tor network is an encrypted network that allows anonymous access to the Internet for its users. Exploring and analyzing the dark Web: A new alchemy
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