Читать книгу Linux Security Fundamentals - David Higby Clinton - Страница 17

As we’ll learn in Chapter 6, “Encrypting Your Moving Data,” information can be transferred securely and anonymously through the use of a particular class of encrypted connections known as a virtual private network (VPN). VPNs are tools for communicating across public, insecure networks without disclosing your identifying information. That’s a powerful security tool. But the same features that make VPNs secure also give them so much value inside the foggy world of the internet’s criminal underground.

A popular way to describe places where you can engage in untraceable activities is using the phrase dark web. The dark web is made up of content that, as a rule, can’t be found using mainstream internet search engines and can be accessed only through tools using specially configured network settings. The private or hidden networks where all this happens are collectively known as the darknet. The tools used to access this content include the Tor anonymity network that uses connections that are provided and maintained by thousands of participants. Tor users can often obscure their movement across the internet, making their operations effectively anonymous. Like VPNs, the dark web is often used to hide criminal activity, but it’s also popular among groups of political dissidents seeking to avoid detection and journalists who communicate with whistleblowers.

A great deal of the data that’s stolen from servers and private devices eventually finds its way to the dark web.