40 ISSN 2334-3745 June 2016 PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 10, Issue 3 Terrorist Migration to the Dark Web by Gabriel Weimann “Increasingly, we are unable to see what they [terrorists] say, which gives them a tremendous advantage against us.” — FBI Director James Comey, December 2015 [1] Abstract Te terms Deep Web, Deep Net, Invisible Web, or Dark Web refer to the content on the World Wide Web that is not indexed by standard search engines. Te deepest layers of the Deep Web, a segment known as the Dark Web, contain content that has been intentionally concealed including illegal and anti-social information. Te conventional Surface Web was discovered to be too risky for anonymity-seeking terrorists: they could be monitored, traced, and found. In contrast, on the Dark Web, decentralized and anonymous networks aid in evading arrest and the closure of these terrorist platforms. Tis paper reports some of the recent trends in terrorist use of the Dark Web for communication, fundraising, storing information and online material. Keywords: Internet; Dark Web; Deep Web; Terrorism; Al-Qaeda; Islamic State Introduction B eneath the familiar online world that most of us know and use, a world of YouTube, Google, Facebook, and Twitter, lies a hidden network of sites, communities, and platforms where people can be anyone, or do anything they want. Tis is the Dark Web. One can describe the Internet as composed of layers: the “upper” layer, or the Surface Web, can easily be accessed by regular searches or directing your web browser to a known website address. However, “deeper” layers, the content of the Deep Web, are not indexed by traditional search engines such as Google. Te deepest layers of the Deep Web, a segment known as the “Dark Web,” contain content that has been intentionally concealed. Te Dark Web can be defned as the portion of the Deep Web that can only be accessed through specialized browsers. A recent study found that 57% of the Dark Web is occupied by illegal content like pornography, illicit fnances, drug hubs, weapons trafcking, counterfeit currency, terrorist communication, and much more.[2] Probably the most notorious example of these activities can be seen in Te Silk Road website. In October 2013, the FBI shut down the first version of this drug market and arrested its owner Ross William Ulbricht. Te Dark Web has been associated with the infamous WikiLeaks, as well as Bitcoin, said to be the currency of the Dark Web. Over its successful two-year run, Te Silk Road made over US $1.2 billion in bitcoins. Of course, dissident political groups, civil rights activists and investigative journalists in oppressive countries have also been known to use the Dark Web to communicate and organize clandestinely. To access material in the Dark Web, individuals use special sofware such as TOR (Te Onion Router) or I2P (Invisible Internet Project). TOR was initially created by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory as a tool for anonymously communicating online. It relies upon a network of volunteer computers to route users’ web trafc through a series of other users’ computers so that the trafc cannot be traced to the original user. Not all Dark Web sites use TOR (i.e., “.onion”) addresses, but a TOR-enabled web browser can access virtually any site without revealing the user’s identity. On the Dark Web, a visitor must know where to fnd the site in order to access it. A few search engines have been developed for the Dark Web, but they are limited in scope and usefulness.