When browsing the web and watching the news these days you hear a lot about the so called Dark Web and the Tor network. This is a part of the internet (the largest part people say) that is hidden from the general public unless you have a special browser and know your way around. You are supposed to be able to find anything on there, from website that also have site on the normal web to sites where you can buy drugs and guns and site where you can hire hackers or even hitmen. You should be able to also find childporn and nasty stuff like that on there, but for obvious reasons I did not look for that and I will not go into that.
Other then the things mentioned above the Dark Web is also used for good, for example people in countries with a hostile regime are able to get news in and out of the country without the government knowing who they are. So, the Dark Web is used by anyone that wants to keep their identity hidden, for whatever reason they have.
Before I go any further let me start by saying I have no interest in using any of the illegal services I have found on the Dark Web, but it is interesting to me what is going on on that part of the web and it is fun to figure out how one would actually buy stuff from the Dark Web and most importantly keep your identity hidden while doing that.
So, how to get on the Dark Web, well you can not get on there with any of the regular browsers, like Firefox, Chrome or Internet Explorer, you need a special browser and the one to use is the Tor browser. Not sure if there are more, but this at least is the most well known. The Tor browser is basically a modified version of Firefox that routes traffic trough various servers and keeps you anonymity safe.
Getting the Tor browser is easy (and legal) just click the Tor icon above and it will take you to the website of the Tor Project (all on the ‘normal’ web). Just click the link on there and it will download the browser like any other piece of software and after that you can install it. After that you open the browser and you are on the Dark Web…well not really. You can not go into google and type “buy drug” or “buy guns” and expect to get on some website where you can buy that. Google on Tor is exactly the same google as on the normal web other then that you might end up on a google page from another country (I ended up at google.no because my traffic was routed trough Norway). In face every site you go trough by typing the URL you are used to do in your normal browser, gets you on the same page you are used too.
To find any of the hidden pages on the Dark Web you need to find a page with an .onion extension. So like .com or .nl the .onion extension is especially for the Dark Web and can only be accessed by the Tor browser. The problem is that you can’t just go to www.buyanillegalgun.onion as most url’s are just a random set of characters. For example lets look at the DuckDuckGo search engine (The search engine that doesn’t track you). On the normal web you can find it here: https://duckduckgo.com/ but on the Dark Web you will have to go here: https://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion/ which is not a reals easy URL to remember. There are websites on both the normal web as the Dark Web that contain a list of .onion websites, one if which is The Hidden Wiki, which has a rather large list of interesting sites. There are of course a lot more sites on the Dark Web, with all sorts of stuff you might not want to know about, but I’m guessing that even the Dark Web has a Darker Web with even more nasty and scary sites, but they will not be listed on a easy to find list on the web and will most likely be on invitation only.
So, what can you buy on the web if you know where to look? Without looking too hard I found pages to buy drugs and guns and a page I could hire a hacker to hack anyone or anything. Drugs and guns send to any address you want and I assume you give that hacker a name and that’s it you would just have to get them the money they want for their goods of service. You have been taking steps te be untraceable until now, so it is best for both you and the seller to not use a credit card to pay them, because that is not ver anonymous. The way to pay on the Dark Web is by using Bitcoins.
Bitcoins are a so called crypto currency, which is money that is not linked to any bank or country and can be transferred without cost and most importantly, for the products I talk about above, anonymous. To use bitcoins you have to create a virtual wallet where you can store them. Assuming you are indeed buying a gun or drugs, I guess you are creating that wallet with information not leading to you. Next you have to add money to that wallet, which can be done by credit card or iDEAL for example, but again you might want to keep yourself hidden and find other ways. There are services that give you bitcoins for cash money or money transfers, so keeping yourself hidden might take some work.
Next would be making the deal which, strangely, will be done by email, which is not the most secure way to communicate. All of the sites I found with shady business used encrypted email and all of them did this with a program called GPA is the GNU Privacy Assistant (GPA). This piece of software translated normal text to gibberish (encrypted text) which you can send over email to the seller. The seller has published a his own public encryption key on his site which you will need to use to encrypt your message. To that public key is linked his own personal key which he (and only he) can use to decrypt your message to normal text.
As an example I encrypted a piece of text: “this is a piece of text”
Which will end up looking like:
—–BEGIN PGP MESSAGE—–
Version: GnuPG v2
hQEMAxmn+eJAZz0bAQf+Mj8z9+/d5k8tZC5cITkhTpe2srjwN5w5Rbj1HZglPVwX
DUoCu++CNkm/5UUDv4+riQK+8qpjSk1dutenuf+ghiVj+u68r5X0vkU0UNrAv8l3
WlJCL9tHqipC/q84ZcI9AvUN55PVcjA2pIS0TmfrF2Ru35uv+J8hbZ0fyK5qS7vM
FzWxnbP+431fzQIQ17abNAIfxqPB+LB6Lz4fjPkLci7kMZcelROik+fOgynRGVDl
e0RU5umF9hNHoWLExv5dyABgiyPXK69LyyRmlZX3vTLSsRFbMIifNnghBgysuVf3
gFQZblz1BUq1dYHdcVnwtPpwDI3fcem/cEiy/dTaO9JQAfuZVy78tfXeFFrmOZ2n
OA5Aqo3+HcUSsVW1cwEkJqDvQzeREDTJqM+txzDidVJOwpu2NNBPz2XwzlcdpdYI
CyZ6JGjn4xK2W1IhKzGCfrM=
=rMYJ
—–END PGP MESSAGE—–
and only the one with the private key that goes with the public key I used can decrypt it
So that’s another step in the process of buying stuff you are not supposed to buy from the web, next is the shipping. This can of course go to your house, but again, not very safe I’d say. It seems this might be the most tricky part of your ‘operation’. It might be pretty safe to send stuff to your house, but what if you do not what the seller to know your address, just in case? A P.O. Box is an option, but you need some kind of identification to get one, so you could pay someone to get one for you and give you the key, or get a fake ID, which would give you the same problem of getting it send to you without it being traced to you. You can send it to the postoffice for yourself to pick it up, but I assume you need to show some sort of ID when picking up a package and if you do not have one for John Doe you will not get your package.
It looks like staying totally anonymous will take some time ans work, but possible I’d say, it all depends on how much you want or need the item you are buying I suppose.
If for some reason you want to send me an encrypted email, use my public key below.
—–BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK—–
Version: GnuPG v2
mQENBFcH/l4BCADm6fMmV/UDvMaO0GiaibuSEY3+OYcPbJv8D5uC/MJikdoRPXIb
8d9aGvAV0Hol/1r++ob66O7r6uL81Ck7QcTQOjrEm7rheg0cyd8oBeeNlLuLuiYr
C6pIB7Cy1d3RN8LlcB6mUJR2Z8QPr6eVp+c1mNqBDQqu5QprcFJ6w+9swsq8JWIm
wNubSlGvdRkckjHN1kz5+uYxyJfycAs2hXAIYmIMLFYPQbB5HMWY5lLbhaEmBzic
NYZle0i8vMbk1nUOubuETFNkDYi1zxi3mbrAzVsUSx5Y2W/DrK4ZZ7N1h7dvdYI/
gNC5LGRSbO+cIesoZjGkEX/V80DluzpsaSPFABEBAAG0Jm5vdG15bmFtZSA8bm90
bXluYW1lQG5vdG15YWRkcmVzcy5vcmc+iQE5BBMBCAAjBQJXB/5eAhsDBwsJCAcD
AgEGFQgCCQoLBBYCAwECHgECF4AACgkQrElbcr4q20SqJAf7BuUZmWXuxApGzYhl
px6uisihBP2DvjJQLbqLrLSomn80O2b/o+M6c1bUDe62NSzC/5DSHLvI+AvDKLDV
QYXKFRJo01OFadytjJ2urGYa5mupReaKPZFU6J0xtLUacmV1HaTt9J2Hki1WpMIJ
46GYS8Ytv2B9dJubO4wMtpsdLTIYOunp7ThFAIwmlCukIMdce+twohJMiptBrGFe
/HN/5h2nj4f4mxCrbl7or1V/zrkVTipT/L92mfd0UOK8y9RXz3FEi+KPSNYE8cfa
y+7yk+v4TCeVGWQal5gkUTBAb4kmpDHfyC/LKBYPEUi5kf2qBSsIiss7aWAMAP4q
oE1zvrkBDQRXB/5eAQgAuykU8s1q6wjzGGniNdurrGsA6fbuttLzEqNHoHO2ZygK
W8W/ZSgRQMliTcteSGCih7/uo6FzaSTsViWppZnzh5NA6GpN9/eYj0YcZOqy81Nb
6dC9MkxwVLWgA63wKB0CDevHTST4SXlwf4R1AxqU+Q4P8iDZ7C9C6wyAfJ7FmLeW
0nH/Cyt8a9QiYDBBroYAkTJNHq9Yi9K+Fa4nFxsRyEDBlWtDzrD6QcTMQ1x8i1Bm
uk3nlj/eKhcybFO5WgC5WotGpZEoyTdqDdT3iu4aGtQOoS/3Q12pdkqMKyfXEmLp
E32OucQvuOlxVzYNGegy1LoI2k4LImJW7tjczD9pJwARAQABiQEfBBgBCAAJBQJX
B/5eAhsMAAoJEKxJW3K+KttEXioIAKWfjD1jiIKjXKNm3pUKIJw+p1PEpi4xj2Ol
1JgnPjzqlqUVIO6QaY9G5J0vWAu8p07a1Qcxl0D9V9cbMo8IITVVZaG0zmTqZRmm
z7bepHuOYhl7MXiC8rEcRFdDafRufyakQsZVs+Faxr5iKuDUBfJbzJ2jc0yNuLsr
PTWAxAUtcFhdDrJNHHI2l4UJTv+ITpRjdcesMnZlVwRLtmFSXl8WGhFK+qGf6mQj
KYhIUT1BVmxW2DP3Qj1zejGzdmeLxygqQbywFpqavnstjaUUuuiOjlmy54oI7Xgs
2TI7oz1VtaFFC7dQK4tRT0paVyeVEE62vtddzWNmE0hW9O4++l8=
=FhKu
—–END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK—–
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