The Role of the Dark Web in Future Cyber Wars to Come

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/role-dark-web-future-cyber-wars-come

By Jason Rivera and Wanda Archy
02/21/2019

Warfare is an ever-changing discipline that has evolved alongside human 
civilization for nearly all of recorded history. From the moment that early 
hunters crafted the first spear, from the first war to occur between two 
tribes, to the modern warfare dynamics of today's world – war has evolved in 
parallel with mankind. As warfare expands, so do the domains in which it is 
fought. We fought each other first over land, then the sea, and then the air. 
We launched satellites into space, and then we created anti-satellite weapons 
to destroy those same satellites that we had put into space. Most recently, 
humanity engineered a capability to share information almost instantaneously 
throughout the globe via the Internet; we then subsequently found ways to use 
that same global connectivity to hold each other's critical infrastructure at 
risk.

The primary takeaway of the above is that warfare has always and will always 
continue to evolve. A recent evolution that this paper will focus on is the 
"Dark Web", to include how this aspect of the Internet has affected national 
security over the last decade as well as how it may affect national security in 
the years to come. We use quotations in our initial introduction of Dark Web 
because it is known by many names and is often conflated with similar terms 
that characterize other related concepts (such as the Deep Web). Accordingly, 
this paper will seek to establish a conceptual framework of the Dark Web as a 
sort of landscape characterized by a series of threat issues and threat actors 
that national security professionals should be aware of. We will then build 
upon this framework of viewing the Dark Web as a landscape so that we may 
illustrate its applications to both the kinetic and digital aspects of human 
warfare.

This paper will narrow its scope by focusing solely on the national security 
considerations of the Dark Web, and not those issues that delve into the realm 
of domestic law enforcement. Drug trafficking, financial fraud, counterfeit 
goods, illegal pornography, etc. – these are issues that this paper defines as 
falling into the realm of law enforcement. Weapons proliferation, terrorism, 
intelligence gathering & extortion, malicious services-for-hire, etc. – these 
are issues that this paper defines as falling into the realm of national 
security. We are aware that there is not necessarily a clean split between 
issues of law enforcement and national security concern; again, our intent here 
is to narrow our focus onto those threats that have unique national security 
implications.

[...]

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