Dark internet: Encyclopedia - Dark internet

Dark internet

The terms dark internet or dark address refer to any or all of the unreachable network hosts on the Internet.

It should not be confused with deep web, dark web or darknet. The first two of these refer to Web sites that, intentionally or not, are hard to find. This may be either because there are no hypertext links to their content or because their content is dynamically generated, for example from constantly-changing databases, and so search engines have trouble indexing it. A darknet is a set of network connections using protocols other than HTTP but still on the public Internet, established in a closed and secretive way between trusted parties only, usually for the purposes of peer-to-peer file sharing.

To understand this distinction, remember that

• The World Wide Web, sometimes referred to as "the Web", is an interconnected set of documents and files linked together by hyperlinks and
• The Internet or sometimes just "the Net", is an interconnected set of computers and computer networks, linked to each other by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, microwave links etc.

See the nomenclature section below.

Some resources on the 'Web — which is an abstract, information space — are difficult or impossible to reach. Follow the links above for more information about this phenomenon.

Some parts of the Internet — which is a physical collection of computers and other hardware — are difficult or impossible to access no matter what services, including Web services or not, may be hosted there. This latter case is what this article is about.

Dark internet - Causes

The most common cause of dark address space is router misconfiguration. Some military sites on the archaic MILNET address blocks also frequently fall into dark addresses. It is also speculated that hackers utilize malicious techniques to hijack private routers to either divert traffic or mask illegal activity.

Dark internet - Security issues

The dark internet received a lot of attention in 2001 when many security organizations, including Arbor Networks, identified rogue dark networks as a potential farm for denial-of-service attacks and other illegal activity.

Dark internet - Nomenclature

Though some people (including the aforementioned Arbor Networks) sometimes refer to dark internet hosts as "dark webs" or "the dark web", the terminology is quite incorrect, as a web refers to a collection of interconnected documents, while an internet refers to a collection of computers.

See also

• World Wide Web
• Internet

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Dark internet", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki