Abstract

The dark web is a portion of the internet where illegal activity is often conducted. It is different from the surface web in many ways, including no DNS (websites are navigated to by IP address), an onion browser (Tor) to connect, and anonymity due to the encryption of client packets. These differences mean illegal activity is harder to find, track, and criminals are harder to prosecute. The dark web allows individuals to obtain illicit services or goods anonymously. If the sites hosting illegal activity are taken down, they can reappear within 24 hours. These sites can host a type of eCommerce that directly harms individuals. Individuals’ social security numbers, addresses, birthdays, credit card information, and other significant personal information can be bought and sold on the dark web. Criminals often obtain these susceptible pieces of information from company data breaches, malware campaigns, and social engineering victims. The most alarming aspect is that the person to whom the information belongs may never know they are at risk until it is too late. Given the severity of the matter, our team will be creating a web scraper to scrape the dark web for the selling of individuals’ personal information. This will be hosted through Microsoft azure and allow users to access a web page on the surface web where they can search for themselves. Though the results may not be highly accurate (such as in the case of a common name), they can give the users a better insight as to if their information is being sold on the dark web.