Darknet Ecosystems: Surfacing Underground Economies

The utilization of anonymous communication models, while troublesome for security practitioners, present unique information tracking opportunities. The ability to monitor, track and secure information may be organically increased through the perception that group members are getting something “free” out of the exchange of information. This may likely suggest that underground economies could be influenced, when the concept of “free” lowers the perceived market value of “anonymity”. This in turn has the effect of surfacing underground economic activity. Evidence may likely suggest that an ability to visualize data increases when free information exchange models are implemented. In reverse, one could expect to see the opposite behavior; restrictive information exchange models likely drive up the usage of underground economies making it more difficult to visualize data traffic. The surfacing of underground economies through the semantically driven research engine developed as part of this research increases darknet usage pattern awareness.