Peter Grabosky (2001) notes that virtual crime is not any different than crime in the real world — it is just executed in a new medium: “‘Virtual criminality’ is basically the same as the terrestrial crime with which we are familiar.
By Michael Chertoff and Tobby Simon
Image Attribute: Photo by TMAB2003 on Flickr and used here with Creative Commons license.
Peter Grabosky
(2001) notes that virtual crime is not any different than crime in the real
world — it is just executed in a new medium: “‘Virtual criminality’ is
basically the same as the terrestrial crime with which we are familiar. To be
sure, some of the manifestations are new. But a great deal of crime committed
with or against computers differs only in terms of the medium. While the
technology of implementation, and particularly its efficiency, may be without
precedent, the crime is fundamentally familiar. It is less a question of
something completely different than a recognizable crime committed in a
completely different way.”
DRUGS, WEAPONS
AND EXOTIC ANIMALS
Websites such
as Silk Road act as anonymous marketplaces selling everything from tame items
such as books and clothes, to more illicit goods such as drugs and weapons.
Aesthetically, these sites appear like any number of shopping websites, with a
short description of the goods, and an accompanying photograph (Bartlett 2014).
STOLEN GOODS
AND INFORMATION
It is correct
to assume that dedicated sites facilitate users to trade in both physical and
proprietary information, including passwords and access to passwords for
surface Web paid-pornography sites and PayPal passwords (Westin 2014). PayPal
Store, Creditcards for All and (Yet) Another Porn Exchange are active websites
that offer such services.
MURDER
The
Assassination Market website is a prediction market where a party can place a
bet on the date of death of a given individual, and collect a payoff if the
date is “guessed” accurately. This incentivizes the assassination of
individuals because the assassin, knowing when the action will take place,
could profit by making an accurate bet on the time of the subject’s death.
Because the payoff is for knowing the date rather than performing the action of
the assassination, it is substantially more difficult to assign criminal
liability for the assassination (Greenberg 2013). There are also websites to
hire an assassin — popular ones are White Wolves and C’thuthlu (Pocock 2014).
TERRORISM
The dark Web
and terrorists seem to complement each other — the latter need an anonymous
network that is readily available yet generally inaccessible. It would be hard
for terrorists to keep up a presence on the surface Web because of the ease
with which their sites could be shut down and, more importantly, tracked back
to the original poster. While the dark Web may lack the broad appeal that is
available on the surface Web, the hidden ecosystem is conducive for propaganda,
recruitment, financing and planning, which relates to our original
understanding of the dark Web as an unregulated space.
HACKTIVISM
More radical
critics and hacktivists occupy part of the political dissidence space. The
group Anonymous, commonly associated with Occupy Wall Street and other cyber
activism, is one prominent hacktivist group (Jones 2011).
EXPLOIT
MARKETS
Exploits are
malware based on software’s vulnerabilities — before they are patched. Zero-day
exploits target zeroday vulnerabilities — those for which no official patch has
been released by the vendor. “Zero-day” refers to the fact that the programmer
has had zero days to fix the flaw. Exploit markets serve as platforms for
buying and selling zero-day exploits, and an exploit’s price factors in how
widely the target software is used as well as the difficulty of cracking it
(Miller 2007).
ILLEGAL
FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS
Websites such
as Banker & Co. and InstaCard facilitate untraceable financial transactions
through various methods. They either launder bitcoins by disguising the true
origin of the transactions or give users an anonymous debit card issued by a
bank. Users are also given virtual credit cards issued by trusted operators in
the dark Web (Dean 2014). Buying stolen credit card information has never been
easier. A website called Atlantic Carding offers this service, and the more you
pay, the more you get. Up for grabs are business credit card accounts and even
infinite credit card accounts associated with ultra-high-net-worth individuals.
The user’s details — name, address and so on — are available at an additional
cost (Dahl 2014).
THE HIDDEN
WIKI
The main
directory on the dark Web is the Hidden Wiki. It also promotes money laundering
services, contract killing, cyber attacks and restricted chemicals, along with
instructions to make explosives. As with other dark Web sites, the links to
these sites frequently change to evade detection (Williams 2011).
HUMAN
EXPERIMENTATION
The Human
Experiment was a website that detailed medical experiments claimed to have been
performed on homeless people who were usually unregistered citizens. According
to the website, they were picked up off the street, experimented on and then
usually died. The website has been inactive since 2011 (Falconer 2012).
HEIST
There are many
rob-to-order pages available in the dark Web, hosted by people who are good at
stealing and will steal anything that you cannot afford or just do not want to
pay for (Siddiqui 2014).
ARMS
TRAFFICKING
Euroarms is a
website that sells all kinds of weapons that can be delivered to your doorstep
anywhere in Europe. The ammunition for these weapons is sold separately — that
website has to be tracked down separately on the dark Web (Love 2013).
GAMBLING
Many popular
bitcoin gambling sites block US IPs because they are afraid of prosecution from
the United States, which has a tight hand on gambling in the United States.
With the help of the dark Web, users of these sites can continue gambling by
disguising their US IP (O’Neill 2013).
PEDOPHILIA
Pedophilia, or
CP (for child pornography) as it is commonly referred to on the dark Web, is
extremely accessible. Pornography is accepted on the surface Web with some
regulation. The dark Web offers various types of sites and forums for those
wishing to engage in pedophilia (Greenberg 2014).
About The Authors:
Michael Chertoff, chairman and
co-founder of the Chertoff Group and senior of counsel, Covington & Burling
LLP, was secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security from 2005 to 2009.
Previously, he was a US Court of Appeals judge and chief of the US Department
of Justice Criminal Division. He is a magna cum laude graduate of both Harvard
Law School and College. He is a commissioner with the Global Commission on
Internet Governance.
Tobby Simon is president of The
Synergia Foundation, an applied research think tank that works closely with
academia, industry and polity to establish impactful solutions in the areas of
geo-economics and geo-security. Tobby is a commissioner at the Global
Commission for Internet Governance and an advisory board member of the Centre
for New American Security. He is a graduate of the Harvard Business School and
a research affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is
currently pursuing his Ph.D. at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in
Bangalore, India.
Publication Details:
The excerpt is from the Global Commission
on Internet Governance Series: Paper No. 6, originally published by the Centre for International Governance Innovation and Chatham House. Reprinted with
permission.
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Paper - LINK