Dark Web

Only darkness or is there a ray of light?

“Technology is always a two-edged sword. It brings in benefits but as many as disasters.”

The dark web refers to encrypted online content that is not indexed by search engines. The dark web is a component of the deep web that displays that source of content that does not appear through regular Internet browsing activities. Most deep web content consists of private files hosted on Dropbox and its competitors or subscriber-only databases rather than anything illegal. Many dark web sites simply provide standard web services with more secrecy, which benefits political dissidents and people trying to keep medical conditions private.

To understand the dark web, consider internet content existing in three segments: 

The dark web, the clear web (or surface web), and the deep web.

The dark web’s content on the internet isn’t viable through common browsers or standard browsing technology. Content on the dark web is designed to be hidden from search engines and casual users — we can’t simply stumble across dark web sites by accident.
The dark web, compared to the billions of sites available on the clear and deep web, comprises just a few thousands of sites.

The clear web is the traditional, easily navigated internet content accessible through all standard browsers and technology. When someone visits any basic website e.g thetimeofindia.com, they will find the original content accessible to all without something to hide. Search engines, like Google, crawl (or index) the clear web to smooth users’ navigation.

The deep web consists of content search engines can’t index — this includes material that’s accessible only behind login pages or on websites that have restricted or blocked search engines from indexing their contents. When we log into a bank or social media accounts, for example, the content available to us as registered users is the deep web. Pages or sites that request not to be indexed or are designed so a crawler can’t navigate their contents (e.g., a page that might require extended user interaction to access materials) are also part of the deep web.

More on Dark Web

Researchers Daniel Moore and Thomas Rid of King's College in London distributed the contents of 2,723 live dark web sites over five weeks in 2015 and found that 57% host illicit material.
A 2019 study, Into the Web of Profit, conducted by Dr. Michael McGuires at the University of Surrey, shows that things have become worse. The number of dark web listings that could harm an enterprise has risen by 20% since 2016. Of all listings (excluding those selling drugs), 60% could potentially harm enterprises.

As with the early Internet, the dark web has also gained a reputation as a haven for illegal activities. The dark web, like the web before it, is frequently blamed for horrible crimes, such as child abuse and murder for hire. Even Though these crimes existed long before the invention of the internet, its invention helped to promote tolerance in the late 20th century, when many laws discriminated against alternative lifestyles. Similarly, drugs once sold illegally on the dark web are increasingly being decriminalized. The dark web makes it harder to enforce both just and unjust laws.

NOTE: The dark web and the deep web are also often erroneously used interchangeably. The deep web includes all the pages that don’t pop up when you run a web search. The dark web is just one part of the deep web. The deep web also contains everything requiring a login, such as online banking, pay sites, and file hosting services.

The Darker side

Within the criminal communities on the dark web, fraudsters have built entire e-commerce platforms designed to trade in illicit goods and services. The infamous Silk Road marketplace, launched in 2011, was the first market to combine the anonymizing dark web technology with the power of anonymous cryptocurrency transactions. Silk Road became a model for all future dark web marketplaces. At any given time, a handful of large-scale criminal marketplaces operate on the dark web, each with thousands to tens of thousands of listings for illicit goods and services. These marketplaces use familiar site structures, akin to the user experience of browsing on Amazon or eBay. On these markets, users can browse listings by category, navigate vendor advertisements, filter their search options by price, location or vendor reviews, and message the vendors or market administrators with questions.

Established platforms allow vendors — particularly fraud vendors dealing in digital goods — to automate and scale their operations. Many fraud vendors use an auto-delivery mechanism for their listings, which ensures buyers receive the volume of data purchased immediately after checkout. In this way, vendors can continue to turn profits and move inventory around the clock.

Is the Dark Web only a web of frauds?

The dark web is home to hundreds of different communities and hosts a wide variety of site types — medical forums, political parties, graphic design firms, anime fan gatherings, and more. It contains mirrors of clear websites. It’s a place of anonymity, but that doesn’t immediately equate to criminality. The dark web is a privacy tool, designed with user security and anonymity in mind. Security and privacy are neutral — they’re as beneficial to legal communities looking for protection as they are to criminal communities looking for a way to hide. Research conducted by Terbium Labs in 2017 showed that 47.7% of site content across Tor hidden services is legal — other numbers in the industry closely match this stat.

Dark Web Browser

Accessing the dark web requires the use of an anonymizing browser called Tor. The Tor browser routes your web page requests through a series of proxy servers operated by thousands of volunteers around the globe, rendering your IP address unidentifiable and untraceable. Tor works like magic, but the result is an experience that’s like the dark web itself: unpredictable, unreliable, and maddeningly slow.

Law enforcement officials are getting better at finding and prosecuting owners of sites that sell illicit goods and services. In the summer of 2017, a team of cybercops from three countries successfully shut down AlphaBay, the dark web’s largest source of contraband, sending shudders throughout the network. But many merchants simply migrated elsewhere.

“The anonymous nature of the Tor network also makes it especially vulnerable to DDoS”, said Patrick Tiquet, Director of Security & Architecture at Keeper Security, and the company’s resident expert on the topic. “Sites are constantly changing addresses to avoid DDoS, which makes for a very dynamic environment,” he said. As a result, “The quality of search varies widely, and a lot of material is outdated.”

Conclusion

There’s no reason to be afraid of the dark web. On the contrary, the dark web is an essential privacy tool. As governments work to weaken encryption with backdoors and corporations gain greater access to everything we do, privacy and security technologies like the dark web must be vigorously defended. And that starts with understanding them beyond sensational headlines.

Blockchain

Every once in a while, a new technology, an old problem, and a big idea turn into an innovation. Blockchain is this innovation. It is the biggest opportunity set we can think of over the next decade. Blockchain completely changes the perception of who controls the data and gives individuals the exclusive rights over the information pertaining to them.

Blockchain is a decentralized data management system. Its name translates literally into its functionality. A Blockchain consists of chunks of data known as blocks connected to each other in the form of a chain. Multiple copies of such chains are maintained and updated all over the world. Any discrepancy observed in a chained copy maintained by a volunteer can be then corrected with the help of other copies in the world.

In today's scenario, The storage of your data spans multiple servers and such physical environments are typically owned and managed by hosting companies. Most of the data is centralized and between the server and the client, the hosting companies can act as the third party.  Every now and then we get to hear about the mismanagement of such sensitive information by hosting companies.

● The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scam

● Indian Jobseekers scam 2019

● SORM Data leaks

Moreover, centralized information is susceptible to cyber-attacks. At times even states are at risk.

But what makes Blockchain a big game-changer? 

Blockchain works as the ultimate remedy to such problems. 

Blockchain is a ledger or diary which is impossible to forge setting up a mapping between owner and objects. Think about multiple diaries being maintained by individuals about the same thing. For example let us consider a transaction, the record of which gets simultaneously updated in all diaries all over the world.

These diaries now keep the record of all previous transactions with this new transaction in the same order. If anyone tries to maliciously change one of the diaries the changes would be caught.
The real system works in pretty much the same way. All over the world, nodes exist which keep a record of a particular Blockchain. A node is a computer when the nodes that are on the network all over the world validate the addition of a block then only the Blockchain is updated.

 Whenever a new block is added, it’s HASH value is also calculated. The HASH value is an alphanumeric string generated by a mathematical function that takes the message in the block as the input.

Each new block holds the HASH of the previous block and thus the Blocks are chained.

  

Any change in the information in the block would change it a HASH value, note that the blocks get added to the chain with their HASH value thus a changed HASH value would make the chain redundant.

The Blockchain updates itself every ten minutes. It does so automatically. No master or central computer instructs the computers to do this.

As soon as the spreadsheet or ledger or registry is updated, it can no longer be changed. Thus, it’s impossible to forge it. You can only add new entries to it. The registry is updated on all computers on the network at the same time.

Various nodes compete to add a new block to the Blockchain, once done by one, others also get updated. Signatures are maintained to ensure privacy so that individuals whose data is being saved can only access it. 

Smart Contracts

The best way to implement Blockchain technology in any field is to structure it’s working around the Smart Contracts concept. The best way to describe smart contracts is to compare the technology to a vending machine. Ordinarily, you would go to a lawyer or a notary, pay them, and wait while you get the document. With smart contracts, you simply drop a bitcoin into the vending machine (i.e. ledger), and your escrow, driver’s license, or whatever drops into your account. Thus an asset or currency is transferred into a program and the program runs some code and automatically validates a condition to determines whether the asset should go to one person or back to the other person, or whether it should be immediately refunded to the person who sent it or some combination thereof. In the meantime, the decentralized ledger also stores and replicates the document which gives it a certain security and immutability.

Applications of Blockchain

Trade

The very popular cryptocurrencies make use of Blockchain. Cryptocoin doesn’t have any centralized server used for its issuing, transactions, and storing, as it uses a distributed network public database technology named blockchain, which requires an electronic signature and is supported by a proof-of-work protocol to provide the security and legitimacy of money transactions. Bitcoin is one such example. Bitcoin’s market cap surpasses $138 billion and this is the most popular kind of digital currency.  Read here to know more about Bitcoin.

Healthcare

Blockchain technology can facilitate the transition from institution-driven interoperability to patient-centered interoperability. Blockchain technology allows patients to assign access rules for their medical data, for example, permitting specific researchers to access parts of their data for a fixed period of time. With blockchain technology, patients can connect to other hospitals and collect their medical data automatically.

Governance

A blockchain-based digital government can protect data, streamline processes, and reduce fraud, waste, and abuse while simultaneously increasing trust and accountability. On a blockchain-based government model, individuals, businesses, and governments share resources over a distributed ledger secured using cryptography. This structure eliminates a single point of failure and inherently protects sensitive citizen and government data.

With abundant possibilities, Blockchain opens up to a new era of information technology with much better and secure use of one's data.

Loihi Chip

A Chip that can Smell!!

“Need is the mother of invention!”

The growing requirements of robots to undertake and assist humans in all their undertakings has encouraged the origination of a chip that replicates mammals in the power of senses too. Wait for a minute and think, what if your PC smells the odour and also gives you an idea about the source of it!! A PC with a nose?

This chip “Loihi” isn't your typical silicon chip but rather is neuromorphic, developed to work the same way as a brain with digital circuits that communicate like neurons. It’s more of a digital recreation of a nose.It uses an asynchronous spiking neural network (SNN) to implement adaptive self-modifying event-driven fine-grained parallel computations used to implement learning and inference with high efficiency.

The chip was formally presented at the 2018 Neuro Inspired Computational Elements (NICE) workshop in Oregon.The chip is named after the Loihi volcano as a play-on-words - Loihi is an emerging Hawaiian submarine volcano that is set to surface one day.

It’s Origin

As a result of over a decade of studying olfactory bulb circuitry in rodents and trying to figure out essentially how it works, the researchers from Intel and Cornell University have developed a neuromorphic chip that can identify and learn the smell. While Thomas Cleland, a professor of psychology at Cornell University, was studying the biological olfactory system in mammals by measuring the electrical activity seen in their brains on smelling different odours, he configured a set of algorithm describing the use of Very-large-scale-integration(VLSI) systems containing electronic analog circuits to mimic neuro-biological architecture present in the nervous system. It is like a human brain with digital circuits that communicate like neurons.

Announced in September 2017, Loihi is predominantly a research chip meaning performance characteristic are not guaranteed. This is Intel's 5th chip in the neuromorphic category. The first three chips were early internal test chips while the fourth is a 10 nm wafer-level probe study. The chip was initially tested and simulated using FPGAs. Actual silicon implementations arrived in late November.

How does this Algorithm work?

This is based on rapid learning and robust recall in neuromorphic olfactory circuit. Identification of odorant samples under noise, based on the architecture of the mammalian olfactory bulb and implemented on the Intel Loihi neuromorphic system. As with biological olfaction, the spike timing-based algorithm utilizes distributed, event-driven computations and rapid (one shot) online learning. Spike timing-dependent plasticity rules operate iteratively over sequential gamma-frequency packets to construct odour representations from the activity of chemosensory arrays mounted in a wind tunnel. Learned odorants then are reliably identified despite strong destructive interference. Noise resistance is further enhanced by neuromodulation and contextual priming. Lifelong learning capabilities are enabled by adult neurogenesis. The algorithm is applicable to any signal identification problem in which high-dimensional signals are embedded in unknown backgrounds.

Implementation on the Loihi neuromorphic system

Combining the methods like Mitral cell implementation, Granule cell implementation, Excitatory synaptic plasticity and Inhibitory synaptic plasticity customizes integrated circuits that model biological neural computations, typically with orders of magnitude greater speed and energy efficiency than general-purpose computers. These systems enable the deployment of neural algorithms in edge devices, such as chemosensory signal analyzers, in which real-time operation, low power consumption, environmental robustness, and compact size are critical operational metrics. Loihi is fabricated in Intel’s 14-nm FinFET process and realizes a total of 2.07 billion transistors over a manycore mesh. Each Loihi chip contains a total of 128 neuromorphic cores, along with three embedded Lakemont x86 processors and external communication interfaces that enable the neuromorphic mesh to be extended across many interlinked Loihi chips.

Demonstrations and testing of chip

The chip, powered by the neural algorithm, is able to identify and even learn the neural pattern of odours based on inputs from an array of sensors. The chip was able to identify odours even when their pattern was 80% different from the one it had learned originally.In a demonstration, the chip was able to learn and recognize the scents of 10 hazardous chemicals based on data they fed to it, by 72 chemical sensors. The chip, based on the electrical responses, was able to mimic the biological olfaction system and learn each smell. It was then able to identify each smell, even in the presence of interfering odours.

Loihi based neuromorphic system

• Kapoho Bay (2 chip, 262k neurons)

Kapoho Bay is a USB stick form factor that incorporates 1 or 2 Loihi chips. Announced on Dec 6, 2018, Kapoho Bay includes a USB host interface and a DVS interface for neuromorphic sensors such as a camera. With 2 chip Kapoho Bay has 256 neuromorphic cores with 262,144 neurons and 260,000,000 synapses.

• Nahuku (32 chip, 4M neurons)

Nahuku is a scalable Arria10 FPGA expansion board. Intel uses the Nahuku board as the framework for building larger systems. The Nahuku board comes in multiple configurations from 8 to 32 chips. Those chips are organized as 16 chips in a 4 by 4 grid mesh on both sides. With 32 chips there is a total of 4,096 neuromorphic cores incorporating a total of 4,194,304 neurons and 4,160,000,000 synapses. With the Nahuku board, an FPGA host is connected to a set of conventional sensors such as actuators as well as neuromorphic sensors such as a DVS camera or a silicon cochlea. The board communicates with a standard "super host" CPU which can be used to send commands to the board and to the management core on the chips themselves.

Future Implementations of this neuromorphic chips

This may prove to be a milestone in the field of robotics. The Intel’s Loihi neuromorphic chip can smell hazardous chemicals and also exhibit the property of self learning of new smell. This “electronic nose systems" technology has many potentials in the field of chemistry to identify compounds on the basis of their peculiar smell and can also be very useful for assistants at chemical labs and industry. You never know one day using this AI, people would be able to generate all the senses which would could sense even better than the human’s original ones.

Cyberspace

Cyberspace-how safe we are?

All the electronic gadgets we use today are connected to the internet. Internet of things connects our devices to many other devices, so they have our data, which can be accessed by some private companies, then they can further use that data in a positive or negative way. But what is that space or place where these immense amounts of digital information are stored? 

It's Cyberspace. 

Cyberspace is a large computer network made up of many worldwide computer networks that employ TCP/IP protocol to aid in communication and data exchange activities. 

The term "cyberspace" first appeared in the visual arts in the late 1960s, when Danish artist Susanne Using (1940-1998) and her partner architect Carsten Hoff (b. 1934) constituted themselves as Atelier Cyberspace. Under this name, the two made a series of installations and images entitled "sensory spaces" that were based on the principle of open systems adaptable to various influences, such as human movement and the behavior of new materials.

The term was initially coined by “William Gibson” in 1984 in the book Neuromancer.

As through metaphorical lenses, Don Slater used it describes as “the sense of a social setting that exists purely within a space of representation and communication ... it exists entirely within a computer space, distributed across increasingly complex and fluid networks."  

We take cyberspace for granted. We don't think much beyond the screens in front of us. We simply log in, post on Facebook, write a tweet, or send an e-mail, and magically it's gone, instantly appearing on someone else's screen or someone else's inbox. We don't even read the terms and conditions of social media and blindly accept them.

A case study - TOM-Skype 

In around 2008, researchers heard about the suspicions of content filtering on the Chinese version of Skype, particularly on the chat client. So, they set up an experiment in the lab, where they had two computers. On one computer was the Chinese version of Skype and on the other, they had the English version of Skype. In between they put a network monitoring tool called the Wireshark that they use all the time to monitor network traffic, and they started typing banned words. 

They'd say: "Would you like to meet at Tiananmen Square?" On the other chat client, it would just say: "Would you like to meet at (blank)?"

They also noticed that whenever one of those banned keywords was being inputted, a connection was being made to an IP address, a server at that location was not password protected. They could look at all the directories on that server. They decrypted one of the directories and saw millions of personal Skype communications that were being surveyed by Skype on behalf of the Chinese government. Everything from credit card transactions to personal exchanges between two people was being vacuumed up and sent to a server in mainland China. This scandalous finding even made it to the business section of The New York Times.

Nate Villeneuve, a security researcher with the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto found eight servers comprising the TOM-Skype surveillance network, as well as others specifically set to monitor chat traffic from Internet cafes and TOM Online's wireless service. Those servers, said Villeneuve, contained massive log files that contained personal information about both TOM-Skype and Skype users, along with the complete contents of the chats that had been captured using keyword filtering.

The TOM-Skype system scans for a wide range of keywords, including a large number that Villeneuve described as politically sensitive, such as "communist," "Taiwan independence," "democracy," "Tibet," and even "milk powder," the last a reference to the brewing scandal in China over adulterated milk products. Chats that contain such keywords are logged and their contents stored on the servers.

A few years later, researchers revisited the experiment and found that not only was the same keyword censorship still going on but also that it had become more refined and sophisticated. Even today Skype claims it gives end to end encryption, but who would believe Skype or any other social media in a world of cyber espionage and sabotage?

Cyberspace is changing rapidly, but in a direction, that's diametrically opposite from what it was meant to be.

To fully grasp the pivotal issues surrounding cyberspace, global security, and human rights today, researchers point to three major social forces:

1. Changes in communication technology.
2. Role of state in cyberspace.
3. Changing demographics of cyberspace.

The confluence of these three broad developments happening right now has a dramatic impact on human rights, liberal democracy, and freedom.

The core fundamental principles are under threat today. Information is no longer readily available on the internet. Governments arbitrarily cut off the internet or censoring it at their borders. The integrity of information is at questions today.