Evaluating Pros and Cons of Dark Net

Running head: CYBERCRIME
Evaluating Pros and Cons of Dark Net
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:

1CYBERCRIME
Table of Contents
1. Introduction............................................................................................................2
2. Concept of Dark Net as a secure form of communication.....................................2
3. Pros of Dark Net.....................................................................................................3
4. Cons of Dark Net....................................................................................................4
5. Evaluation of Dark Net value to society.................................................................6
6. Conclusion.............................................................................................................8
References...................................................................................................................9

2CYBERCRIME
1. Introduction
Dark Net is known as computer network using limited access, which is utilized
mostly the unlawful peer-to-peer contribution of files. It is overlay network to the
Internet which is only accessed by particular software, configurations as well as
authorizations. It is used as non-standard communication protocols to purposely
unreachable by Internet (Bartlett,2015). The purpose of Dark Net is collecting
thousands of websites, which is used anonymity tools such as Tor, I2P for hiding
the IP addresses. It enables anonymous whistleblowing as well as protects the
users from the surveillance plus censorship. It is such a network which is not
indexed by the search engines like Google and Yahoo. The systems are
accessible to particular group of people as well as not to the popular internet
community. It is only available using approval, software, plus configurations
(Spagnoletti, Ceciand Bygstad, 2018). The harmless places by use of dark net
are academic databases, corporate sites, hacking as well as piracy.
The paper is based on the advantages and disadvantages of Dark Net and
summarizes the concept using a secured form of communication. There is an
evaluation of the dark net as value for society. It is a form of communication
among whistleblowers plus journalists which are facilitated using Dark Net Tor
Network through using the applications included SecureDrop.
2. Concept of Dark Net as a secure form of
communication
The term Dark Net was coined in the year 1970 for referring to the computer
networks which are remoted from “Advanced Research Projects Agency Network
(ARPANET)” for safety purposes. The dark nets obtain communication from
ARPANET. The sites of dark net are not being indexed using search engines as it
is not accessible to them (Owen and Savage, 2015). The academic databases
are available to the facility plus students, while the commercial networks are only
accessible to the workers. As a part of the dark net, the selected sites are peer-
to-peer networks plus self-hosted internet sites.
Buxton and Bingham(2015) pointed that dark net is portrayed as a domain
which is frequently used by the criminal elements and created plus used by

3CYBERCRIME
people those are required privacy for the legal reasons like sharing of business
information related to proprietary. The data is being exchanged throughout
connections of an encrypted peer-to-peer network and use of overlay networks
like Tor. The dark net is a type of virtual private network with measures to
formulate that the , as well as IP addresses of customers, are not discoverable.
The purpose of this is to hide the communications so that it is secured (Moore
and Rid, 2016). The members those are joined with expectations can share
information and also files with the risk of detections. The complex routing system
is made difficult to trace the communication among two users.
The purpose of the dark net is to offer a location for private communication
when the community communication is being unwanted as well as not permitted.
For example, in Egypt, the Mubarak regime had shut down the Internet of their
nation; therefore, political dissidents are being used Tor dark net for maintaining
communications with the entire world. Van Buskirk et al. (2017) concluded that
dark nets are being used for network security testing. The manager is set apart
with a piece of the unused IP addresses gap for dark net as well as configured
network monitoring devices for detecting the traffic headed to IP addresses in the
range. As no such legitimate systems are running on dark net, therefore traffic for
addresses in it is from malicious plus misconfigured system (Bancroft and Reid,
2016). Dark nets are used to detect system which is infected by worms plus
malicious programs as well as an attempt to spread over the network.
3. Pros of Dark Net
The dark net is a hidden network which is not accessed and found on the
standard search engines as well as browsers. Access to the particular software is
required Tor Browser, which can allow the users to hide identity plus the online
activities behind various layers of the encryption method (Omand, 2015).
Following are the advantages of the dark net usage, which are summarized
below:
Freedom of information: Accessing the background information is not only
benefited surfing to the dark net. Another advantage is that it can promote
freedom of information while it unlocks the hidden information (Nunes et al.
2016). Knowledge is a power as well as a network of dark net of the cloud