
This method is very similar to the way early search engine web crawlers worked.

This crawler will return a large list of URLs to dark web websites that it gathered. This process is then continued for each gathered link for a set depth. Snowball sampling is a web crawler architecture that takes a root URL and crawls the website for outgoing links to other websites. Snowball sampling is a method that can be used to locate hidden services on the dark web for security research including data collection and CTI streams. In order to locate more relevant forums for security research, the snowball sampling method can be used to crawl the darknet. However, because these forums are easy to find, they often attract amateurs in the community. These can be found on the dark web or even the surface web (the web we all know and that this article is hosted on). Some forums can be found on the dark web directories listed above. This can make it difficult to find hacker forums on the dark web - specifically forums where serious individuals gather. Instead, website URLs are either exchanged person to person (online or in-person) or collected into a simple Html directory. In addition, traditional search engines such as Google do not exist on the dark web. These websites require the TOR browser to resolve, and cannot be accessed through traditional browsers such as Chrome or Safari. Website URLs on the dark web do not follow conventions and are often a random string of letters and numbers followed by the. Within this space, lies the dark web - anonymized websites, often called hidden services, dealing in criminal activity from drugs to hacking to human trafficking.Ĭonducting security research on the dark web can be difficult.


However, the deep web contains pages that cannot be indexed by Google. To most users, Google is the gateway to exploring the internet. Source: Pexels Warning: Accessing the dark web can be dangerous! Please continue at your own risk and take necessary security precautions such as disabling scripts and using a VPN service.
