Security News > 2023 > April > For cybercriminal mischief, it’s dark web vs deep web

The study is built upon 10 million posts on encrypted platforms and other kinds of data dredged up from the deep, dark and clear web.

Across the dark web onion sites, the total number of forum posts and replies decreased by 13% between 2021 and 2022, dropping from over 91.7 million to around 79.1 million.

The study said that, in the past, most threat actors conducted their operations on the dark web alone, while in recent years there's been migration to deep-web encrypted messaging platforms.

Cybercriminals favor deep web platforms because of their relative ease of use versus Tor, which requires more technical skills.

"Across easily-accessible platforms, chats and channels, threat actors collaborate and communicate, trading tools, stolen data and services in an illicit network that operates in parallel to its dark web equivalent," said the study.

"Forums and marketplaces in the dark web are notorious for not always having a high level of uptime. They sometimes end up going offline after a period of time, or as we've seen recently have been seized by law enforcement and government agencies," he said, noting that one such platform, RaidForums, was taken down in 2022, and BreachedForums just a couple weeks ago.

News URL

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/cybercriminals-swap-dark-web-deep-web/