Attacks Landscape in the Dark Side of the Web

The Dark Web is known as the part of the Internet operated by decentralized and anonymous-preserving protocols like Tor. To date, the research community has focused on understanding the size and characteristics of the Dark Web and the services and goods that are offered in its underground markets. However, little is still known about the attacks landscape in the Dark Web. For the traditional Web, it is now well understood how websites are exploited, as well as the important role played by Google Dorks and automated attack bots to form some sort of "background attack noise" to which public websites are exposed. This paper tries to understand if these basic concepts and components have a parallel in the Dark Web. In particular, by deploying a high interaction honeypot in the Tor network for a period of seven months, we conducted a measurement study of the type of attacks and of the attackers behavior that affect this still relatively unknown corner of the Web.