The Dark Web is having a rough time right now... although the victims in this case won't earn too much sympathy. An Anonymous-linked hacker speaking to Motherboard brought down about a fifth of the Tor network's 'secret' websites (over 10,000 of them) in a claimed vigilante move. The intruder decided to attack a Dark Web hosting service, Freedom Hosting II, after discovering that it was managing child porn sites it had to be aware of -- they were using gigabytes of data each when the host officially allows no more than 256MB. Each site had its usual pages replaced with a message that not only chastised FH2, but offered a data dump (minus user info) and explained the nature of the hack.
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.
From early indications, the perpetrator is handling the data relatively responsibly. It's going to a security researcher who'll hand it over to law enforcement, which might just use it to bust the porn peddlers.
Source:
https://www.engadget.com/2017/02/05/hack-knocks-out-fifth-of-dark-web/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @06:30AM
At best you're chasing unicorns. At worst, you'll never be a lawyer.