What Is The Dark Web?

If you read enough news stories about hackers and cyberattacks, you probably notice one term popping up again and again: “the dark web.” Reports make the dark web sound like a lawless corner of the internet, and, in many ways, it is. But, at the same time, it’s also a very misunderstood part of the web.

The different layers of the internet

To understand the dark web, you have to understand how the internet as a whole is structured. In a simplistic explanation, the internet as you know it is only a tiny fraction of the greater World Wide Web. When you access a site like MERIT Solutions, The New York Times, or Amazon, that’s what’s known as the “surface web.” These web sites are indexed by web crawlers, and are visible through search engines like Google. 

Then, there’s the deep web, not to be confused with the dark web. The deep web lives just beneath the dark web, is huge, and is made up of all the websites that require authorization to access. Your email inbox, for example, is on the deep web, because it’s locked away behind your login credentials. The same goes for your banking info, your Netflix account, and your private social media pages. The sites of the deep web are not indexed by web crawlers, and thus cannot be found by a search engine. You cannot find your Gmail inbox by googling for it: You instead can find mail.google.com, and log in to its deep web page from there.

The dark web is anonymous and decentralized

Finally, the dark web. The dark web is a part of the deep web, as these pages are also not indexed by web crawlers. However, you cannot access the dark web with a typical web browser. Instead, you need a specific web browser built to traverse this corner of the internet. (“Tor” is the most popular.) Without it, you’ll never find these sites.

Dark web sites are decentralized and anonymous, which makes it very difficult to track down who is behind any of its activity. That enables those who don’t want to be tracked to use the internet anonymously, and, thus, is why the dark web has a reputation for hosting illegal activities. While that certainly can happen, there are legitimate uses for the dark web as well, including journalists writing from countries with strict censorship laws.

However, one use bad actors have found for the dark web is for sharing information stolen from companies and organizations during cyberattacks. You may have heard of hacking groups posting massive collections of passwords on the dark web: Hackers can pay for the privilege of these huge databases of passwords, which they can then use to brute force their way into other organizations’ networks. Again, these sites are decentralized and anonymous: Once something is posted on the dark web, it is very difficult to discover who posted it. It’s another thing entirely to try to take down the site, as it could be coming from any number of countries and jurisdictions. If bad actors release something on the dark web, it’s likely there to stay.

That’s why it’s so important to stay on top of news of security breaches and dark web data sharing. If you learn your passwords were posted on the dark web, you’ll want to make sure to reset those credentials ASAP.