Exploring the availability, protocols and advertising of Tor v3 domains

López, Alejandro Buitrago; Galindo, Javier Pastor; Mármol, Félix Gómez

doi:10.23919/jnic58574.2023.10205938

2023 JNIC Cybersecurity Conference (JNIC) 2023

DOI: 10.23919/jnic58574.2023.10205938

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Exploring the availability, protocols and advertising of Tor v3 domains

Alejandro Buitrago López,

Javier Pastor Galindo,

Félix Gómez Mármol

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2024

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Cited by 2 publications

References 23 publications

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A general and modular framework for dark web analysis

Ruiz Ródenas,

Pastor-Galindo,

Gómez Mármol

2023

Cluster Comput

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The dark web, often linked with illegal activities, can be monitored with different solutions. However, these tools are typically purpose-specific and designed for unique use cases. In this study, we propose a flexible and scalable framework that facilitates the easy integration of new workflows for dark web analysis. The design is based on the control, logic and operations layers, supplemented by a tools module, logs management, asynchronous message-based communication and a database. The implementation maps the features into a microservice approach, utilizing the open-source technologies Docker Swarm, Kafka, ELK Stack (Elastic Search, Logstash and Kibana), and PostgreSQL. A workflow to scrape web elements of Tor onion services is deployed and validated, demonstrating considerable framework performance despite the time-consuming task of navigating the dark web. Over 16 h, the framework collected over half million onion domains (84,371 unique ones) and made 78,555 accesses to them.

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A general and modular framework for dark web analysis

Ruiz Ródenas,

Pastor-Galindo,

Gómez Mármol

2023

Cluster Comput

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Updated exploration of the Tor network: advertising, availability and protocols of onion services

Buitrago López,

Pastor-Galindo,

Gómez Mármol

2024

Wireless Netw

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The Tor network is known for its opaque characteristics and involvement in illicit activities, motivating to shed light on the exposure, lifetime, and functionalities of onion services. This study focuses on the appearance of Tor links in online advertising and monitors the connectivity status and protocols of the collected onion domains through the Tor network over 105 days. Out of 54,602 onion addresses gathered, it was found that 38% of Tor links were advertised only once, 43% between two and five times, and 19% more than five times. Furthermore, 50% of the addresses were exclusively advertised on the surface web, 6% on the dark web, and 44% on both portions. The temporal analysis revealed that 67% of the addresses were predominantly active, 7% were intermittent, and 26% were mostly inactive. The study examined fifteen protocols used by onion services, concluding that 94% employed a single protocol, while 6% utilized between two and eight protocols. Among active sites, HTTP was present in 99.75% of cases, followed by SSH (4.95%) and HTTPS (0.64%). Additionally, onion services without web services often deploy cryptocurrency or instant messaging servers. This study offers a comprehensive and current understanding of the dark web, surpassing previous research in its scope.

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Exploring the availability, protocols and advertising of Tor v3 domains

Cited by 2 publications

References 23 publications

A general and modular framework for dark web analysis

A general and modular framework for dark web analysis

Updated exploration of the Tor network: advertising, availability and protocols of onion services

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