Imagine a world that is composed of
multiple realities, with realities being subjected to every person who dares to
be an observant. A world where multiple realities collide, collapse and hide
from each other, leaving only a small portion of themselves accessible to the
general public, the proletariat, and largely remaining hidden, becoming the
sole possession of the ultra powerful, who then use it to change the reality itself.
Ladies and gentlemen, that’s the Internet
for you!
I can’t vouch for the veracity of what I’m
about to write because this is a pretty dark and recondite phenomenon with no
clear authority in terms of both information and control. However, some studies
on this subject matter have been published and verified by experts who have
experiences from this astounding world. So, let’s plunge into what is now formally
known as the “Deep Web”, the dark and sometimes grisly counterpart of the
morsel Internet as we normally witness on a day to day basis.
It is believed that once we
witness something again and again, then courtesy of the reinforcement, that
thing in itself becomes our own version of the reality, We never bother to
touch what’s beyond what we witness. Time constraints and lack of knowledge
blindfold us, and as a result, we can never really find out how constricted our
version of the universe is. I was absolutely stupefied when I was finally able
to take my own blindfold off. We surf the Internet for hours every day, roaming
through content of all types, running queries on search engines, and finally
feeling content on finding all sorts of documents and information we ever
sought. And that is it. Truth is, there is an entirely different realm of the
Internet that actually commences from the very point our infatuation with it
ends. This is the real Internet as true patrons of the same would call it. And
this is the Internet that you and me, didn’t have access too. Well only until
you read this. So, you ready?
Internet is a complex network of
networks. There is panoply of routers, hubs, switches and layers and layers of
communication protocols that run on these devices to formally form what we
fondly call and amateurishly believe to be the "Real Internet". In reality, only 4% of
the actual Internet is accessible to us, with “the other 96%” escaping
our eye. Truth be told, our version of the Internet is all that we can access
either through search engine queries and various links and IP address file
system paths that may be shared with us. The gigantic search engines with all
their finesse are able to crawl and index multiple types of web content across
the globe and make a formidable database of it which they bring at our disposal
by providing us query and retrieval search mechanisms. While you are usually
stunned by Google’s amazing splendour of producing zillions of search results
in nanoseconds, it is still a meagre portion of all that is out there. This 4%
of the Internet is called the Surface or
Indexed Internet. This is easily
accessible to all Internet users. However, a real gateway guards these minion
search engines from moving beyond that. The other 96% is largely comprised of
the following.
The “touch me not” Internet
While website admins and bloggers
may consider this a baloney to be called a revelation, normal surfers of the
Internet wouldn’t know that a substantial portion of the Internet doesn’t want
itself to be seen by the search engines. One always has the option of changing
the robots.xml and sitemap.xml configuration files on one’s web servers to
forbid access to web crawlers and hence even though these sites may still be available
for public use, you never find them because you don’t have a search engine to
lead you to them. The only way these sites thrive is through private and
in-person link sharing mechanisms. One may believe it’s fatuous to not render
oneself visible to these prolific search engines who take your page to the
world. However, you wouldn’t actually want to do that if you were running say a
political activism blog or something and only wanted selected patrons to access
the site. Moreover, if you wanted to run a secret site which could have been
vulnerable if allowed to be indexed by various search engines, you would use your
own private servers to host the site. A user then would have to key in the
specific IP address to access the secret site and the rest of the Internet
would never even know you existed unless they bumped in by serendipity by
keying the right address by chance. Various corporations, institutions,
organizations and hold on to your hats -terrorist outfits; use these
configurations to host data for only the privy to access. I’m damn sure you too
would have witnessed this while filling up some online academic form or
something which was prevented from being indexed because the site admins would have
wanted a limited load on the servers. They could have ensured that by using
controlled dissemination of the url.
The private and virtual private networks
This is a pretty common
phenomenon in corporations which have got multiple access points to access common
databases and company networks. They’d set up networks which prevent access to
the outside world and forbid incoming access from the outside world as well. Hacking or
rather ‘cracking’ is the art of breaking into these networks by breaching the
security firewalls that are vested with the responsibility of protecting access
privileges to these networks. So internal company mail and access portals are
now accessible only within the company network because there are virtual tunnels
which are impregnable and all company network communication, even though while
it is being routed through the Internet, is actually invisible to the outside
world.
The dynamic Internet
While search engines are
phenomenal at accessing the static content, what about those websites which
render content on the basis of information that a user fills in? So for
example, a registration website which has a homepage and an about page will
have these two pages indexed by the Internet, however when it comes to the
registration page itself, the search engines will only be able to index the
basic page where the details are to be entered. Post that, there could be a
multitude of combinations regarding what more Internet forms are opened up and
what new content pages are displayed. It is all dependent on what data you
entered and what information is stored on the database. Hence an examination
result can never be indexed by the search engines because they simply don’t
know what to enter, maybe a roll number and email or date of birth combination.
Just imagine the amount of data on such a site that is actually rendered only
post the search engine has been blocked access. Actually, all that Internet is
hidden in databases, petabytes and petabytes of data, which comes out
and manifests itself on the Internet only when a user commands it to. Hence
this Internet too is not accessible to the general public. You need a designated
user or a ‘cracker’ to access it.
The Dark or ‘Dead’ Internet
Those who know of the origins of
the Internet, know that ARPANET was the actual predecessor of multiple small
scale networks across US DoD establishments and university departments, and all
of them culminated into the Internet. However, so emphatic was the evolution of
the Internet and so rapid was the metamorphosis, that all protocols were
designed keeping only the new and future machines in mind and all the legacy
systems were tantamount to codswallop on the new Internet. Hence even though
these systems had an Internet of their own, that was rendered obsolete and the
latest machines were never granted access to that tenebrous Internet. As you
might have guessed, these old machines too were never granted access to the new
Internet. Hence their Internet in all its essence, remained a cooped up
phenomenon. However, it is believed that this dead space is still functional
somehow in short ranges and private networks. Hence these machines wherever
they exist, can still communicate with each other till their archaic protocols
don’t muddle with modern devices and get blocked. Surprisingly, this is the safest
of all networks today because no one knows where it exists and how to get in
because even the literature on their protocol design is not available to the
public at large.
And finally, the “Deep Web”
This surely is the most
fascinating of all that we’re likely to stumble upon as a part of this
discussion. There was a need of extreme anonymity within the realms of the
Internet. Who doesn't want anyone snooping and eavesdropping on their
conversations like the Thought Police does, and who wouldn't want a private
space of their own, on the brilliant communication medium - The Internet itself. That is what
consummated in this arcane and yet immaculate concept. Some brilliant minds came up
with new communication protocols and TOR is ostensibly the accepted standard.
In fact Tor is your ticket to the world of deep web! The deep web is that
portion of the Internet which has a communication language of its own. In appearance it maybe similar to ‘our” Internet
but the very difference in language renders it inaccessible to us.
Tor comes up with its own browser
and routing mechanisms and every network packet that is sent across the deep
web, is actually routed through what they call TOR relays. Hence contrary to
what happens in normal Internet communication where a source computers puts its
IP address and destination IP address in network communication packets and then
these packets are vehemently delivered. In Tor, the packets are bounced off
through a network of about 5000 random systems or Tor relays and hence both the
source and destination IP addresses are masqueraded deep within multiple layers
of encryption making it nearly impossible for your next door neighborhood virtual
espionage to track any of this communication to you or the recipient. Simply
said, unlike conventional or our Internet, Tor makes sure that Deep Web packets
remain invisible and even though the final output is still the same i.e a
packet getting delivered, no one knows where it came from and where it went to.
Tor stands for The Onion Router because these Deep
Web websites are actually provided with a .onion domain suffix. This ergo provides
Tor and Deep Web with a new communication paradigm of their own, completely
invisible to the outside world. What is this Deep Web used for? Well, since its
effectiveness in ensuring one’s anonymity cant be gainsaid, it’s the favorite of
those who seek it. Political activists who fear death in the event of their
posts getting traced back to them, now have a resort. Personal conversations between prominent
leaders is now more secure. On the flip side, insider trading can never be
surfaced and you can also have ammunition, guns, drugs and what not delivered at
your home! The Deep Web follows a similar design. There are blogs like this one,
there are shopping portals and there are forums. In case you thought you caught
me on money transfers, well Deep Web supports bitcoins! In fact bitcoins are
the standard currency in Deep Web and Deep Web in itself becomes a large market or a
virtual economy for the regulation of the same.
I’m not an expert on this subject
but I simply wanted to give you a flavor of the Internet you never thought
existed. Just like the theme of the blog that says “What you can’t see”, modern
technology and its revelations have made sure that reality is subjective and purely in
the eyes of the beholder. All that we see, so profound and so comported, and
yet there is a reality, wading in parallel, striving and thriving at the same
time, waiting for you to pay a visit. Will you?
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