The Anonymous-linked hacker claims he has brought down one fifth of the entire “Dark Web”.
If you’ve never heard of the “Dark Web” – a secret encrypted network that exists between Tor servers and their clients – it’s probably for the best. A hotbed of illegal activity, including drug deals, assassins for hire, and child pornography, it really highlights the lows of humanity. Well today, it’s gotten a little bit smaller, as an Anonymous-linked hacker speaking to Motherboard claims to have brought down about 10,000 sites, or about a fifth of the total service.
The hack specifically targeted a Dark Web hosting service, Freedom Hosting II, after discovering that it was hosting a substantial amount of child pornography. Usually, FHII only allows 256MB of data to be hosted per site but the hacker soon discovered that there were gigabytes of porn being hosted – a sign that the hosting service knew about the porn and allowed it to continue.
Reportedly, the attack wasn’t difficult. The hacker only needed to have control over a site (new or existing) to get started. After that, it was mostly a matter of modifying a configuration file, triggering a password reset and getting root access.
The hacker said he plans to hand over all the data he obtained from the hosting service to a security researcher who will hand it over to the proper authorities.
Source: Engadget
