The most popular sites in the "dark red" Internet

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British researchers used a service to surf anonymously and were shocked with what they found. 

 

Most traffic on the Tor network, a service that allows anonymous browsing in the "dark red", addresses associated with images of child sexual abuse, according to a study sites.

 

The research, conducted over six months by a team of English University of Portsmouth, was to catalog the dark hidden network services and determine which are most po[CENSORED]r.

 

The study found many sites selling illegal drugs, but the most po[CENSORED]r were those related to child pornography.

 

However, the lead researcher told the BBC that it is difficult to conclude which type of user is behind visits.

 

Looking at the dark network

 

Tor, an acronym for The Onion Router, is a system of "anonymity" that allows users to surf the internet without revealing who they are or which country they are.

 

Such anonymity offered by the Internet has attracted many people to establish onion hidden sites that offer content, services and illegal products.

 

The Tor network system makes both the supplier and recipient are hardly traceable.

 

For the study, led by Dr. Gareth Owen, some servers to be part of the Tor network is programmed.

 

After all the "hidden" found in the network services cataloged and receiving visitors each were counted.

 

Over six months Owen and his team looked at 80,000 Tor hidden sites.

 

"Most of the hidden service sites were only seen once. Tend not exist for long," said lead researcher during a speech at the 31st Congress Chaos Communications in Hanover, Germany, held between 27 and 30 dciembre, where he presented the findings.

 

Most po[CENSORED]r

 

The study found that the largest number of hidden services was dedicated to the sale of illegal drugs.

 

Also among the five most common were clandestine markets fraud sites, email services and business sites with virtual currency Bitcoin.

 

One of the surprising findings of the team of Owen is that while the number of sites in Tor related to child abuse images is small, attracting traffic was much greater than that of other pages.

 

About 75% of traffic observed in the study sites would abuse, said researcher.

 

"When we found out that we were shocked," he said.

 

"We did not expect at all."

 

Caution in interpreting

 

Despite the strength of that figure, Owen said he had to be cautious about drawing conclusions, as the researcher said not know which of those visits are from people and what machines.

 

"It's not as clear as it seems," he said.

 

"It may seem that many people visiting these sites but it is difficult to conclude from this information."

 

"How much are visitors and what proportion are something else? I just do not know," he said.

 

By "something else" refers Owen eg called crawlers, software that inspect contents automatically and can copy content from the sites visited for further processing.

 

Security agencies use these crawlers to monitor the activity of child pornography sites, and their use could justify part of the constant traffic observed.

 

Meanwhile Roger Dingledine, one of the original developers of Tor, said the study methodology, only long-term scanned sites to see what content offered, can not draw conclusions about what people do in the Tor network .

 

"Without knowing how many sites disappeared before investigators arrived to study, it is impossible to know what percentage of searches were sites of abuse," he said.

 

"There are important uses for hidden services, as when human rights activists use Tor to access Facebook or blogging anonymously," he said.

 

"These uses of hidden services you are new and have enormous potential," he added.