Onion Router | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The Tor Project has made some significant changes to its infrastructure by improving the way the 'onion' network protects its users' privacy and security. Since the beginning, the largest free online anonymity network has been helping users browse the web anonymously, and its onion service provides a network within which encrypted websites can be run anonymously. However, the infrastructure design and encryption behind the service has become little outdated, eventually leaving it vulnerable to potential and resourceful attackers. Tor network has become such a potential target that even Zerodium, a company that acquires and resells zero-day exploits, is ready to pay $1 million for Tor zero-day exploits . Keeping these concerns in mind, the Tor Project has been working to upgrade its infrastructure over the past four years, and the good news is… A few weeks ago, the Tor Project announced the release of Tor 0.3.2.1-alpha that includes support for the next generati...

By now you might be aware of the took down of two of the largest online dark websites— AlphaBay and Hansa —in what's being called the largest-ever international operation against the dark web's black market conducted by the FBI, DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) and Dutch National Police. But the interesting aspect of the takedown was that the federal authorities shut down AlphaBay , but took control of the Hansa market and kept it running for at least a month in an effort to monitor the activities of its visitors. The visitors of Hansa market also included a massive flood of Alphabay refugees, as the seizer of AlphaBay Market forced their visitors to join the Hansa market for illegal trading and purchasing. However, not just Hansa, after AlphaBay's shutdown , many of its users also joined another website known as Dream Market, which is believed to be the second-largest dark web marketplace, ahead of Hansa. After the shutdown of both AlphaBay and Hansa, Dream Market ...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...

Dark Web is right now going through a very rough time. Just two days ago, a hacker group affiliated with Anonymous broke into the servers of Freedom Hosting II and took down more than 10,000 Tor-based .onion dark websites with an alarming announcement to its visitors, which said: " Hello, Freedom Hosting II, you have been hacked. " Freedom Hosting II is the single largest host of underground websites accessible only through Tor anonymising browser that hosts somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of all sites on the Dark Web, anonymity and privacy researcher Sarah Jamie Lewis estimated . Besides defacing all Dark Web sites hosted on Freedom Hosting II with the same message and stealing its database, the hackers also demanded a ransom for 0.1 Bitcoin (just over $100) to return the compromised data to the hosting service. Now, it has been reported that the stolen database from Freedom Hosting II has publicly been released online to a site hosted on the Tor network, wh...

Do you know: There is a vast section of the Internet which is hidden and not accessible through regular search engines and web browsers. This part of the Internet is known as the Deep Web , and it is about 500 times the size of the Web that we know. What is DEEP WEB? Deep Web  is referred to the data which are not indexed by any standard search engine such as Google or Yahoo. The 'Deep Web' refers to all web pages that search engines cannot find, such as user databases, registration-required web forums, webmail pages, and pages behind paywalls. Then, there's the Dark Web or Dark Net – a specific part of that hidden Deep Web. Deep Web and Dark Web are the intriguing topics for the Netizens all around. But when you hear the term 'Deep Web' or 'Dark Web,' you usually categorize them into one. If yes, then you are wrong. What is DARK WEB? Dark Web is where you can operate without been tracked, maintaining total anonymity....

The non-profit organization behind TOR – the largest online anonymity network that allows people to hide their real identity online – will soon be launching a " Bug Bounty Program " for researchers who find loopholes in Tor apps. The bounty program was announced during the recurring ' State of the Onion' talk by Tor Project at Chaos Communication Congress held in Hamburg, Germany. Bug bounty programs are cash rewards gave by companies or organizations to white hat hackers and researchers who hunt for serious security vulnerabilities in their website or products and then responsibly disclose them. Bug bounties are designed to encourage security researchers and hackers to responsibly report the vulnerabilities they discovered, rather than exploiting it. Here's what one of the founders of the Tor Project, Nick Mathewson , said about the bug bounty program as reported by Motherboard: "We are grateful to the people who have looked at ou...

We often talk about Underground communities, illegal websites or black markets, but as they are 'Underground' in nature i.e. Hidden websites running under Onion Network, many of us don't know how to reach the one we are searching for and if hopefully found, then its difficult to figure out a trustworthy vendor. Underground websites offer illegal high quality drugs or rifles, hacking tools, or any illegal services, until now you needed to type long, complex and specific Tor browser URLs directly into the browser which is quite difficult and sometimes the sites change their addresses which makes more difficult to navigate. Not any More! As the first search engine, ' Grams ' ( https://grams7enufi7jmdl.onion ) for online underground Black Markets has been launched in Beta last week, that lets anyone to easily find illegal drugs and other contraband online in an easier way ever and it's pretty fast like Google Search Engine. You don't need to do anything, just li...

Authorities in Britain, Sweden, and the United States have arrested eight more people in the wake of the shutdown of the Silk Road , online illegal drug marketplace which helped dealers sell drugs under the cloak of anonymity. Millions of Dollars worth of Bitcoins (Electronic currency) had been seized and that other online drug dealer should expect a knock on their door by the National Crime Agency. The other suspects were arrested within hours after the FBI arrested 29-year-old Ross Ulbricht , the suspected creator of Silk Road also known as " Dread Pirate Roberts ". Although, he denies charges that he operated the website. Ulbricht is separately accused in a federal indictment in U.S. District Court in Baltimore with a similar count of narcotics trafficking conspiracy and additional charges of soliciting an $80,000 murder-for-hire of a former Silk Road employee. A federal judge on Wednesday ordered that Ulbricht charged with operating a notorious online drug marketplac...

The FBI had seized a website called ' Silk Road ', that was considered one of the most popular Underground places on the Internet for buying drugs and other illicit goods and services. They arrested the site's alleged founder,  Ross William Ulbricht, known as " Dread Pirate Roberts ," in San Francisco, who reportedly had  26,000 Bitcoins worth $3.6 million. The FBI used information from Comcast in the investigation and collaborated with US Customs and Border Patrol, the Internal Revenue Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Department of Homeland Security. Ross Ulbricht Ross William Ulbricht, a 29-year-old graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Materials Science and Engineering  charged with one count each of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, according to the filing. ' Silk Road '  website, which had operated since early 2011, also offered tut...