Dark Web, I2P, and Deep Web Team 5 Daniel Childers, Chase Cossairt, Gregor Haas, Noah Holcombe, April Simon, Quinten Whitaker
History 2002: TOR publicly released 2003: I2P enters beta Developed by US government: United States Naval Research Laboratory, DARPA Still mostly funded by US government Today, millions of users 2003: I2P enters beta I2P: Invisible Internet Project Similar to TOR but uses “garlic” routing instead of “onion” routing
What is the Deep Web? The part of the world wide web not indexed by search engines. Also referred to as invisible web, hidden web, and the undernet. Content hidden behind http forms Must know a URL or IP address, and sometimes have access permission such as a password and identification to access.
Deep Web - How large is it? Makes up approximately 99% of the internet Surface web has over 4.5 billion websites indexed Deep web is estimated to be 400 to 500 times larger than the surface web Growing faster than the surface web
Deep Web (cont) Examples Online Banking Content locked behind a paywall such as Netflix Emails Social Media Profiles
Dark Web Only accessible through alternative web browsers: TOR browser Ensures anonymous browsing, which is important for: Whistleblowers (Edward Snowden) Journalists LEO and military Most commonly used for: Anonymous tips (Panama papers) And more recently...
Dark Web (continued) Uses changed as other technologies developed: Cryptocurrencies, public key cryptography → dark web ‘markets’ First of these was Silk Road, created by ‘Dread Pirate Roberts’ (Ross Ulbricht) Sold illegal goods such as drugs and weapons, usually delivered through mail Ulbricht arrested on 2nd October, 2013; sentenced to life in prison w/o parole After Silk Road was shut down, other markets took its place More secure cryptocurrencies (Monero, zcash, etc) also enabled more markets
Tor “The Onion Router” Messages are encapsulated in multiple layers of encryption much like an onion Each layer is decrypted (peeled) at an intermediate note along the way to its destination The transmitter determines the route before sending any data
Tor Routing (Onion Routing)
Onion Routing Explained Client must know full route before sending message Adds multiple layers of encryption At each intermediate node a layer is decrypted and passed to the next node At the final node, the message is fully decrypted
Pros and Cons of Tor Pros Anonymity Free Secure Communications Cons Slow Connection terminated after 10 minutes Vulnerable to traffic analysis
I2P: Invisible Internet Project What is I2P -Decentralized anonymizing network designed as a self-contained darknet -Allows applications to send messages to each other pseudonymously and securely -Used largely for web surfing, chatting, blogging, and file transfers. History of I2P -proposed as a modification to Freenet in February 2003 - grows into platform anonCommFramework in April 2003 -Code writing started in August 2003 and I2P Android was released on Google Play August 2014
I2P: Mechanics and Garlic Routing -Uses peer to peer encrypted tunnels (all users on the servers are also routers) -Uses Garlic routing, encrypting multiple messages together and making traffic analysis attacks more difficult. -Encrypted tunnels are unidirectional. Incoming and outgoing traffic are separate, improving anonymity. -Packet switching is used for load balancing across multiple peers instead of just one route. -Sender and receiver do not communicate directly with each other. Messages are passed through multiple routers, achieving anonymity.
I2P Garlic Routing
TOR VS I2P -I2P uses garlic routing instead of onion routing which implements ,not only multiple layers, but multiple messages as well making attacks more difficult and improving latency. -TOR does not have unidirectional tunnels -TOR uses circuit switching while I2P uses packet switching -I2P uses its own API so its applications were made specifically for I2p making it more secure and faster and TOR uses SOCKS -I2P is able to use torrents which are more secure and anonymous while TOR cannot. -TOR is more popular and therefore has better funding, a bigger user base, and academic and hacker community support. -Tunnels in I2P are short lived giving attackers a smaller number of samples to be able to prepare an attack, while TOR’s circuits are usually long lived.
I2P: Cons -It is still considered beta software even though it has been 15 years since its creation -It has a limited amount of users which decreases anonymity. Each user is a node and less nodes equal less anonymity. -It is slower than normal Internet. The encryption and routing limits the bandwidth. However, when more users are online, the speed increases.
Sources https://curiosity.com/topics/the-deep-web-is-the-99-of-the-internet-you-dont-see-curiosity/ https://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/how-the-deep-web-works.htm The Invisible Internet Project. https://geti2p.net/ https://staas.home.xs4all.nl/t/swtr/documents/wt2015_i2p.pdf
Sources (cont) https://www.torproject.org/about/overview.html.en https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRYzre4bf7I http://www.worldwidewebsize.com/