On April 5, the German police announced the closure of Hydra, the largest Russian—language store selling illegal goods located in the darknet. How does this shadow segment of the Internet work, what can be found there and why can the darknet be dangerous?
What is a darknet
Darknet (English DarkNet, “black Internet”, or “shadow Internet”) is a hidden segment of the Internet, accessible only through specialized browsers. For the security of network users, the darknet is completely anonymous — an encrypted connection between the participants is used to access it.
The “shadow Internet” has its own addresses of resources on the network.onion. These sites are not indexed, so they cannot be found in a standard search engine — their analogues (TorCH, Seeks) are used instead. Also, the directories of sites in the darknet (HiddenWiki) are used to search for resources for specific tasks.
As a rule, there are three types of networks — the “visible Internet” (ordinary public sites), the “deep/deep Internet” (resources with private access, usually corporate) and the darknet. As in the case of the darknet, resources in the “deep Internet” are not indexed, and access to them is limited by login and password, but special software is not required to get to them.