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A Framework for a Forensically Sound Harvesting the Dark Web

Published: 15 November 2018 Publication History

Abstract

The generative and transformative nature of the Internet which has become a synonym for the infrastructure of the contemporary digital society, is also a place where there are unsavoury and illegal activities such as fraud, human trafficking, exchange of control substances, arms smuggling, extremism, and terrorism. The legitimate concerns such as anonymity and privacy are used for proliferation of nefarious deeds in parts of the Internet termed as a deep web and a dark web. The cryptographic and anonymity mechanisms employed by the dark web miscreants create serious problems for the law enforcement agencies and other legal institutions to monitor, control, investigate, prosecute, and prevent the range of criminal events which should not be part of the Internet, and the human society in general. The paper describes the research on developing a framework for identifying, collecting, analysing, and reporting information from the dark web in a forensically sound manner. The framework should provide the fundamentals for creating a real-life system that could be used as a tool by law enforcement institutions, digital forensics researchers and practitioners to explore and study illicit actions and their consequences on the dark web. The design science paradigms is used to develop the framework, while international security and forensic experts are behind the ex-ante evaluation of the basic components and their functionality, the architecture, and the organization of the system. Finally, we discuss the future work concerning the implementation of the framework along with the inducement of some intelligent modules that should empower the tool with adaptability, effectiveness, and efficiency.

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Cited By

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  • (2023)D2WFP: A Novel Protocol for Forensically Identifying, Extracting, and Analysing Deep and Dark Web Browsing ActivitiesJournal of Cybersecurity and Privacy10.3390/jcp30400363:4(808-829)Online publication date: 15-Nov-2023
  • (2023)Exploring Dark Web Crawlers: A Systematic Literature Review of Dark Web Crawlers and Their ImplementationIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2023.325516511(35914-35933)Online publication date: 2023
  • (2023)Recognition of tor malware and onion servicesJournal of Computer Virology and Hacking Techniques10.1007/s11416-023-00476-z20:2(261-275)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2023
  • Show More Cited By

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    cover image ACM Other conferences
    CECC 2018: Proceedings of the Central European Cybersecurity Conference 2018
    November 2018
    109 pages
    ISBN:9781450365154
    DOI:10.1145/3277570
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    • University of Maribor

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    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 15 November 2018

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    Author Tags

    1. Digital forensics
    2. dark web
    3. forensic soundness

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    • Research-article
    • Research
    • Refereed limited

    Conference

    CECC 2018
    CECC 2018: Central European Cybersecurity Conference 2018
    November 15 - 16, 2018
    Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Acceptance Rates

    CECC 2018 Paper Acceptance Rate 19 of 30 submissions, 63%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 38 of 65 submissions, 58%

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    Cited By

    View all
    • (2023)D2WFP: A Novel Protocol for Forensically Identifying, Extracting, and Analysing Deep and Dark Web Browsing ActivitiesJournal of Cybersecurity and Privacy10.3390/jcp30400363:4(808-829)Online publication date: 15-Nov-2023
    • (2023)Exploring Dark Web Crawlers: A Systematic Literature Review of Dark Web Crawlers and Their ImplementationIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2023.325516511(35914-35933)Online publication date: 2023
    • (2023)Recognition of tor malware and onion servicesJournal of Computer Virology and Hacking Techniques10.1007/s11416-023-00476-z20:2(261-275)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2023
    • (2023)A general and modular framework for dark web analysisCluster Computing10.1007/s10586-023-04189-227:4(4687-4703)Online publication date: 6-Dec-2023
    • (2022)SoK: An Evaluation of the Secure End User Experience on the Dark Net through Systematic Literature ReviewJournal of Cybersecurity and Privacy10.3390/jcp20200182:2(329-357)Online publication date: 27-May-2022
    • (2022)Ontology-Based Methodology for Knowledge Acquisition from GroupwareApplied Sciences10.3390/app1203144812:3(1448)Online publication date: 29-Jan-2022
    • (2022)Dark Web Forensics: An Investigation of Tracking Dark Web Activity with Digital Forensics2022 Interdisciplinary Research in Technology and Management (IRTM)10.1109/IRTM54583.2022.9791646(1-8)Online publication date: 24-Feb-2022
    • (2021)FHKG: A Framework to Harvest Knowledge from Groupware Raw Data for AI2021 IEEE International Conference on Computing (ICOCO)10.1109/ICOCO53166.2021.9673561(49-54)Online publication date: 17-Nov-2021

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