Anonymous hacks the dark web

The dark web accessed through Tor is very infamous. Today, more than 10,000 tor websites came face to face with a warning: “Hello, Freedom Hosting II, you have been hacked.” Freedom Hosting II is a very common and popular service for hosting websites that are only accessible though Tor. The servers came under a compromise in their working by a group affiliating itself with the hacking group called Anonymous.

Even after six hours of the initial announcement of the hacking every site hosted by the service is offline.

What is the catch in hacking the dark web?

The anonymous hacking group has offered to sell the compromised information and data back to Freedom Hosting II. However, this comes in exchange for 0.1 bitcoin or over a $100. This seems very mocking considering the information with the group is a lot. The offer seems less earnest that it appears. What is shocking about the hack is that the hackers claim more than half of the data stored on the servers is child pornography.

Now, the claim itself is impossible to verify without seeing the data itself. But providing all the previous dark web hosting companies there is a chance of this claim being consistent. The dark web is famous for drug dealings and child pornography. Freedom Hosting set up originally was compromised by the law enforcement agencies in 2013. This resulted in a number of prosecutions regarding child pornography. During 2013 the service hosted as many as half of the websites that were only accessible through Tor. Tor is the access provider into the realms of dark web or dark side of the internet.

According to Sarah Jamie Lewis who is a researcher of the dark web, Freedom Hosting II is smaller than its predecessor. Reports found out that it made roughly 20 percent of the dark web sites, which included a small number of bitcoin escrow services, ponzi schemes and hacking forums. Around , 10631 websites are under an offline impact with this hack.

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“This is a major blow considering many were personal or political blogs and forums,” Lewis said. “In the short term, a lot of diversity has disappeared from the dark web.”

Image via TechRepublic