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Resilient communication is my passion. To the best of my ability, I research technology and try to complement, document, and popularly describe network technologies that can resist censorship - after all, truth is born of controversy, not behind the iron curtain. At the same time, the words "darknet" and "deep internet" seem to me marginal and clickbait, because they poorly reflect the essence.
The idea of this article was born in a conversation with young system administrators, who in all seriousness began to retell some tales about mysterious parcels from the darknet, online torture, Japanese evil spirits entering the mind through the Tor network, and other trash content.
So, what are hidden networks and why the real state of affairs for an IT specialist is more fascinating than fairy tales from YouTube.
Action-packed fairy tales
People tend to be afraid of the unknown, and some of us love the feeling of fear: this is why horror films, horror games and books with scary stories are created. In some cases, the unknown causes not fear, but curiosity, which is most inherent in the younger generation.
The search query "darknet" on YouTube gives an almost exhaustive answer about the nature of the emergence of popular horror stories about the shadow Internet. Most of all, I like the whole epic of videos of all kinds of bloggers about parcels from the darknet. Such videos were especially active from five to two years ago (2016-2019), until the viewer got tired of such content. The most annoying thing is that there was nothing forbidden in the parcels.
I've honestly watched a few of these videos in their entirety. This is clickbait in its purest form: the promise of shocking content, heightening expectations, and at the end of the forty-minute video, an airsoft gun and a piece of ground beef appear in the frame: get the vegans off the screens!
You can imagine how, several centuries ago, young boys enthusiastically listened to tales from sailors who had the right to stories about the unknown. Today there are no blank spots on the Earth map (except perhaps the bottom of the oceans) and almost any information can be quickly checked via the Internet.
However, the young man's hunt for accessible thrills has not gone anywhere, so another viewer is happy to absorb stories about red rooms, where, allegedly, violent actions are being broadcast live, the outcome of which can be influenced by donating in cryptocurrency.
Fortunately, the thrill of a teenager does not come from inhuman violence, but only from the fantasy that it is possible, that there are scary places to chat about with friends.
Closer to reality
A quick analysis of search queries shows that the Tor network is almost the heart of a horror story generator. But (!), If an avid adherent of creepypasta from the Internet bothers to launch Tor Browser and try to find at least something from his stories, he will be very disappointed - the darknet is boring!
Unless you have an unhealthy interest in unhealthy things, half an hour of surfing onion sites will drive you into depression and nothing more. No shock content: some illegal substances, some taboo erotica and a couple of forums with people playing hackers, as well as an innumerable number of fraudulent sites that promise everything in the world for prepayment in cryptocurrency: from a smartphone to a gramophone. That's all.
"There are no red rooms on the darknet, we disperse!" - some disappointed lover of horror stories will say, but let him not rush to close the page. I published this article not to force the obvious things, but to redirect the energy of the young researcher into a creative direction. I am actively interested in hidden networks, while I am not engaged in criminal activity and I am not looking for a fabulous ban. It seems to me that a short story about what pushes my interest may come in handy for anyone who is actively interested in the topic of fault-tolerant and hidden networks, or has ever heard of it.
Why does the darknet to an ordinary person
Linking a number to accounts in all kinds of services has become the norm. On the one hand, this provides some level of protection against profile theft, but at the same time it is a direct identifier of the real person, which is hidden behind a fictitious name or nickname. This imposes restrictions on freedom of expression, and is also a potential site for third-party invasions of privacy, from advertising analysis to political repression.
The jurisdiction of the site in the hidden network cannot be determined, therefore the laws there are hardly applicable and everything is based on the internal agreements of the users themselves, who can also remain terra incognita. I can say with confidence that chats without registration, SMS, leaving the identifiers of your provider and other traces are a pleasant resting place with a relaxed atmosphere. Using hidden networks requires certain skills, so the community tends to be a pleasant society of educated IT people - cozy chat rooms and forums dedicated to software and networking. It is somewhat reminiscent of the spirit of radio amateurism of many years ago, when people could communicate uncontrollably through the air, overcoming thousands of kilometers without looking back at any restrictions.
Conditionally yesterday, Roskomnadzor blocked torrent trackers, today - the FBK website (a banned organization in the Russian Federation), and tomorrow, possibly, they will block the sites of all religious organizations that do not belong to the Russian Orthodox Church. This list can be supplemented with thousands of past locks and even more future ones. A survey among my acquaintances shows that most of the blocked web resources do not seem dangerous to them. If you look at the registry you will undoubtedly find sites, the prohibition of which is fully justified from the ethical point of view: child pornography, the sale of drugs, and the like. However, the fact of blocking politically objectionable resources along with the websites of terrorist organizations is outrageous! I will say it again: drugs and forbidden pornography can be found on the regular Internet, because it is impossible to block information instantly. If you do not need this, you will not be interested in such a thing in hidden networks either.
An important advantage of hidden networks is the impossibility of blocking individual web resources. There are methods of paralyzing the work of one or another hidden network as a whole, but this kind of difficulties is fought by the entire community, and not individual administrators of the oppressed sites.
A logical continuation is censorship, or rather its absence in hidden networks. Should we put up with the limitation of free thinking on the regular Internet, surrendering to slogans about information hygiene? I don't think so. A child learns about sex through any modern film or even a music video, inscriptions on the walls of neighboring houses will tell about drugs, a pedophile will watch schoolgirls in the yard ... I try to approach this issue critically and argue this way: law enforcement agencies are needed, but not for in order to plant for likes and reposts, and to figure out the real criminals. But how to work on real criminals, when you can attract any housewife and schoolboy for a slippery comment on Vkontakte? Work for half a day, and the stars fall on the shoulder straps. Another thing is to infiltrate a criminal circle, collect evidence, and in the end, with some degree of success, try to catch the criminals who pose a real danger. To be honest, I am delighted with foreign news about large-scale arrests and the closure of large trading floors that specialize in the sale of prohibited services, funds and substances. This evokes respect for the word "police". As for the sanctions for likes in the opposition public: install wiretaps in all kitchens of the country and you will understand that there will not be enough prisons for all violators. This evokes respect for the word "police". As for the sanctions for likes in the opposition public: install wiretaps in all kitchens of the country and you will understand that there will not be enough prisons for all violators. This evokes respect for the word "police".
If in the public consciousness hidden networks become a common tool like a web browser or messenger, the choice of security officials between an extremist fifth-grader and a drug dealer may finally lean towards a real threat, because the year-long search for a schoolgirl with the subsequent awarding of a fine somehow does not attract an increase in the service, so all that remains is to engage in a real hunt for bad uncles.
Freedom of speech, lack of censorship and everything in this spirit are only part of the pie. For an average IT specialist, a seasoned geek or a novice computer student, the most delicious lies deeper - in the very implementation of hidden networks, because these are masterpieces of human thought: transmit information via the Internet, but with practically no chance to determine the real location of the subscriber and without the ability to intercept his traffic by paths.
I am a beginner C ++ programmer with several books and a couple of spiral video courses under my belt. I received a huge layer of practical skills and theoretical knowledge in the I2Pd developer community... The enthusiasm for such open source projects is completely different from the fanaticism about Apple and other proprietary technology or software. These protocols are completely open, like the source code of software clients: most often, open source software for hidden networks is developed on the basis of sheer enthusiasm to the best of the strength of each participant - these are very exciting projects and nice people! In commercial projects, participants live in the "Pay for life" paradigm - pay to live. Online programming courses from a popular Russian platform openly declare that they set "horse" prices so as not to devalue knowledge. After what I saw - free knowledge in a cozy chat with a high level of communication - the slogans of commercial structures cause an ironic smile. I have no idea how many tens or hundreds of thousands of rubles I would need, in order to get an extensive knowledge base on cryptography in the advertised courses in a year and a half. I probably never will, because I got it for free: if you are interested in cryptography, be sure to check out I2P, because this is a cryptographic atlas: I have never come across such a complex and diverse cryptographic filling anywhere (the same Tor is much simpler). Of course, experienced developers with a deformed consciousness strive to send them to study the source code in its bare form, but getting comments and explanation from the community is also in the order of things. Nobody hides knowledge, because people in the community of hidden networks have learned two nuances: advising someone else - you grow yourself, and you also create a human resource for future development and improvement of technology. Those who do not understand this do not stay in the community.
The overwhelming majority of modern online services are centralized: social networks, forums, etc. - an outsider can only be a consumer in them. The same applies in part to ISPs. Hidden networks, unlike Vasya-Telecom LLC, do not have general directors, administrators and any license restrictions on their use. This means that each of us can not only use the technology, but also make our own contribution: from translating documentation into our native language to maintaining our own node, which, on equal terms with the rest, complements the essence of the network.
By the way, I don't remember the last time I launched an online game, because the life of the community of hidden networks became a second life for me, like an MMORPG for an avid gamer: I don't know the participants personally , so their nicknames are perceived as familiar names characters in the game. Our "guild" constantly has a lot of grandiose plans and it is wildly exciting to make the greatest possible contribution to them! And if you suddenly have an extra couple of rubles lying around - donation in the "game" is welcome: you can directly support the developers, or reinforce your own network infrastructure (pay for hosting servers, etc.). To more clearly describe equality within the community, in I2P ... To do this, I had to solve a couple of small quests: write a script to form a start package with routers that have a Yggdrasil address, and also figure out how the resid (start node) should function in general ... When everything was done, I really enjoyed it - Level up! To some, such entertainment may seem boring, but it is on this enthusiasm that the darknet exists and develops.
Hidden networks are not a place for horror stories, but a platform for free communication of people and the personal development of any person who is not indifferent to network technologies and cryptography.
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