‘360 m WhatsApp numbers from 108 nations leaked on dark web’

‘360 m WhatsApp numbers from 108 nations leaked on dark web’

Subject :Science and Technology

Concept :

The dark net or dark web is an overlay network within the Internet which is not accessible through search engines, and where anonymous activities are carried out. For this reason, a market for illegal activities thrives here, including the sale and purchase of drugs, stolen data, hacking software, pornography etc.

Internet consists of three layers:

• The first layer is public (Surface Web), consisting of sites that one uses frequently such as Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and LinkedIn. This layer makes up only 4% of the entire internet.
• The second layer, the deep web, is a network where data is stored in inaccessible databases (i.e., cannot be accessed through traditional search engines like Google). It is used to provide access to a specific group of people.
  • The data is generally sensitive and private (government private data, bank data, cloud data etc), so kept out of reach.
• The third layer is the darknet which is also known as a part of the ‘Deep Web’. It is a network built over the internet which is encrypted.
  • It is basically a layer of the Internet accessible only by using special software like Tor (The Onion Router), or I2P, which stands for Invisible Internet Project.
  • Anything present on the dark web will not be pulled up in internet searches, thereby offering a high degree of anonymity.