There has been a lot of buzz around Tor, Bitcoin, and the so-called “dark web” (or “deep web”) since the FBI shut down the underground website “Silk Road” on Oct 1st.
As many of you already know, Tor is a network of encrypted, virtual tunnels that allows people to use the internet anonymously, hiding their identity and network traffic. Using Tor’s hidden service protocol, people can also host websites anonymously that are only accessible by those on the Tor network. Enter Silk Road. Silk Road was an online black market where you could buy virtually anything, including but not limited to drugs, weapons, credit card data, contract killers, and more. One of the key “features” of Silk Road was that it was only accessible via the Tor network, hidden from the mainstream web…
