A December 2014 study by Gareth Owen from the University of Portsmouthfound that the most commonly hosted type of content on Tor was child pornography, followed by black markets, while the individual sites with the highest traffic were dedicated to botnet operations (see attached metric). Many whistleblowing sites maintain a presence as well as political discussion forums. Sites associated with Bitcoin, fraud related services and mail order services are some of the most prolific. To counter the trend of controversial content, the artist collective Cybertwee held a bake sale on an onion site.
In July 2017, Roger Dingledine, one of the three founders of the Tor Project, said that Facebook is the biggest hidden service. The Dark Web only makes for 3% of the traffic in the Tor network.
A more recent February 2016 study from researchers at King's College London gives the following breakdown of content by an alternative category set, highlighting the illicit use of .onion services.
Botnets
Botnets are often structured with their command and control servers based on a censorship-resistant hidden service, creating a large amount of bot-related traffic.Bitcoin services
Bitcoin services such as tumblers are often available on Tor, and some – such as Grams – offer darknet market integration. A research study undertaken by Jean-Loup Richet, a research fellow at ESSEC, and carried out with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, highlighted new trends in the use of Bitcoin tumblers for money laundering purposes. A common approach was to use a digital currency exchanger service which converted Bitcoin into an online game currency (such as gold coins in World of Warcraft) that will later be converted back into money.Darknet markets
Commercial darknet markets, which mediate transactions for illegal drugs and other goods, attracted significant media coverage starting with the popularity of Silk Road and Diabolus Market and its subsequent seizure by legal authorities. Other markets sell software exploits and weapons. Examination of price differences in Dark web markets versus prices in real life or over the World Wide Web have been attempted as well as studies in the quality of goods received over the Dark web. One such study performed on the quality of illegal drugs found in Evolution, one of the most popular cryptomarkets active from January 2014 to March 2015. An example of analytical findings included that digital information, such as concealment methods and shipping country, seems accurate," but the illicit drugs purity is found to be different from the information indicated on their respective listings." Less is known about consumer motivations for accessing these marketplaces and factors associated with their use.Hacking groups and services
Many hackers sell their services there individually or as a part of groups. Such groups include xDedic, hackforum, Trojanforge, Mazafaka, dark0de and the TheRealDeal darknet market. Some have been known to track and extortapparent pedophiles. Cyber crimes and hacking services for financial institutions and banks have also been offered over the Dark web. Attempts to monitor this activity has been made through various government and private organizations, and an examination of the tools used can be found in the Procedia Computer Science journal. Use of Internet-scale DNS Distributed Reflection Denial of Service (DRDoS) attacks have also been made through leveraging the Dark Web. Many hacking groups such as Code:Green also recruit Hackers depending on their skills. There are many scam .onion sites also present which end up giving tools for download that are infected with trojan horse or backdoor.Fraud services
There are numerous carding forums, PayPal and Bitcoins Trading websites as well as fraud and counterfeiting services. Many such sites are scams themselves.Hoaxes and unverified content
There are reports of crowdfunded assassinations and hitmen for hire, however, these are believed to be exclusively scams. The creator of Silk Road was arrested by Homeland Security investigations (HSI) for his site and allegedly hiring a hitman to kill six people, although the charges were later dropped.There is an urban legend that one can find live murder on the dark web. The term "Red Room" has been coined based on the Japanese animation and urban legend of the same name. However, the evidence points toward all reported instances being hoaxes.
On June 25, 2015, a creepy indie gameSad Satan was reviewed by Youtubers Obscure Horror Corner which they claimed to have found via the dark web. Various inconsistencies in the channel's reporting cast doubt on the reported version of events.
Phishing and scams
Phishing via cloned websites and other scam sites are numerous, with darknet markets often advertised with fraudulent urls.Puzzles
Puzzles such as Cicada 3301 and successors will sometimes use hidden services in order to more anonymously provide clues, often increasing speculation as to the identity of their creators.Illegal pornography
There is regular law enforcement action against sites distributing child pornography[67][68] – often via compromising the site by distributing malware to the users. Sites use complex systems of guides, forums and community regulation. Other content includes sexualised torture and killing of animals and revenge porn.Terrorism
There are at least some real and fraudulent websites claiming to be used by ISIL (ISIS), including a fake one seized in Operation Onymous. In the wake of the November 2015 Paris attacks an actual such site was hacked by an Anonymous affiliated hacker group GhostSec and replaced with an advert for Prozac. The Rawti ShaxIslamist group was found to be operating on the dark web at one time.Social media
There exists within the Dark Web emerging social media platforms similar to those on the World Wide Web. Facebook and other traditional social media platforms have begun to make Dark Web versions of their websites to address problems associated with the traditional platforms and to continue their service in all areas of the World Wide Web.Click here to read about the dark web
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