The Dark Web: Defined, Discovered, Exploited

Defined – What Is The Dark Web?

In its early days, the Internet was little more than a promising set of interconnected university and government sites, accessed through command line instructions on machines over something called ARPANET. ARPANET, a research project funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency, was the predecessor of the Internet with “…the goal… to exploit new computer technologies to meet the needs of military command and control against nuclear threats, achieve survivable control of US nuclear forces, and improve military tactical and management decision making.”¹ It was not until the early 1980s, with the introduction of the TCP/IP standard that the roots of the modern-day Internet began. In roughly 25 years, the Internet went from its first Graphical User Interface (GUI) based browser with a few colors and some midi music tapping a few beats in the background to a network that spans the globe encompassing billions in US dollars in ecommerce and allowing live news, music and other media to be streamed from anywhere. Most importantly, it created an environment that allows for endless forms of collaboration between essentially any individual in the world with access. While this has allowed humanity to increase its knowledge positively and exponentially, it has also enabled users with less than noble purposes to increase their knowledge and skillsets as well.