WIRED has learned that FBI agents relied on Flash code from an abandoned Metasploit side project called the “Decloaking Engine” to stage its first known effort to successfully identify a multitude of suspects hiding behind the Tor anonymity network. Now Metasploit has a new and surprising fan: the FBI. Surfing the dark web is certainly not something you should be doing at work or in a public place full of people happy to sneak a peek at your screen.For more than a decade, a powerful app called Metasploit has been the most important tool in the hacking world: An open-source Swiss Army knife of hacks that puts the latest exploits in the hands of anyone who’s interested, from random criminals to the thousands of security professionals who rely on the app to scour client networks for holes.

So if you're going to browse its collection of sites, do so with caution if you wish to remain on the right side of the law. And hidden IP addresses make it more difficult for malware to sneak off sites and infect computers, although there are plenty of services that mask and hide IP addresses on the normal web.īut the dark web does facilitate the activities of hackers and cyber crooks, can be rife with scammers and is full of illegal content that can be easily accessed. It can and does serve a purpose when it comes to helping whistleblowers remain safe and anonymous online.

Is the dark web a haven for cyber criminals? Facebook, for example, offers a dark web portal to its social network. It can also be a font of hard-to-find information not posted on mainstream websites or can act as a way for legitimate sites to offer their services with an extra degree of privacy.

Hacking tor websites