Context-The Kerala police have set up a state-of-the-art lab complete with enabling software to intervene and crack down on the rising criminal activities over the Darknet, known as the underworld of the Internet.

• Expert from Israel trains Kerala Cyberdome analysts to monitor the darknet
• Spearheading the programme is Cyberdome, the State police department’s premier facility dedicated to prevent cybercrime and mitigate security threats to the State’s critical information infrastructure

The Darknet

• The darknet refers to networks that are not indexed by search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing. These are networks that are only available to a select group of people and not to the general internet public, and only accessible via authorization, specific software and configurations. This includes harmless places such as academic databases and corporate sites, as well as those with shadier subjects such as black markets, fetish communities, and hacking and piracy.

How do users remain anonymous?

• The secret world of the Darknet is not entered through any gate, but through the TOR: TOR stands for "The Onion Router". The word "onion" refers to the layers that must be penetrated by the data: Unlike normal surfing, the computer does not connect directly to the server where the website is located. Instead, a whole series of servers are involved in the connection in order to create the greatest possible anonymity.

The layers of the "Onion"

The starting point

• Your journey to a Deep Web page starts on your computer

The first layer: Entry-Point

• The entry point (Server 1) into the TOR network receives the IP address from your computer. The TOR client then connects your computer to another server (server 2), the node. All data is encrypted on the way to this node.

The second layer: TOR nodes:

• The node (Server 2) only knows the entry node - but not your computer or your IP address. The data sent via this node is encrypted and therefore cannot be read by the node. In addition to the entry point, the TOR node only knows the exit node (Server 3), i.e. the server that finally connects you to the desired page.

The third Layer: Exit Node

• The exit node (server 3) establishes the actual connection to the web server on which the requested target page is located. From the exit node, you can access the legitimate services that end in .onion. Outside the TOR network, services with the .onion extension are not accessible.

The target: Web server

• This is where your journey ends - you have reached your destination. This is where the Deep web page you want to access is stored. This web server only knows the IP address of the exit node. The web server does not get to know the other servers or your computer.

?Concerns over Darknet:

• According to a ‘Cryptopolitik and the Darknet’, researcher out Of the 2,723 websites they could classify by content, 1,547 – 57 % – hosted illicit material ranging from drugs (423 sites), illegitimate pornography (122) and hacking (96), among others.
• The network is also used by several activists especially those living under oppressive regimes to communicate without any government censorship.

Darknet and India:

• The Information Technology Act deals with cybercrime and comes under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. There are only six sections in the law that deal with cybercrime.
• With the changing times, India needs a code of criminal procedures dealing with cybercrime that would come under the Ministry of Home Affairs, which deals with policing issues.
• Also, there is a need for police, trained in changing cyber trends who are dedicated only to cybercrime and not transferred to other police units.

About Cyberdome

• Cyberdome is a technological research and development centre of Kerala Police Department, conceived as a cyber centre of excellence in cybersecurity, as well as technology augmentation for effective policing.

• It envisages as a high tech public-private partnership centre of collaboration for different stakeholders in the domain of cybersecurity and handling of cyber crimes in a proactive manner. 

• The IT industry will contribute in terms of expertise, manpower, hardware, software, training, etc on a pro-bono basis.

• It is a motley crew of ethical hackers, expert coders, youth prodigies skilled in software, law enforcers and civilian volunteers who huddle behind flickering computer terminals at the office, with most of them offering their services for free. 

• They are State law enforcement’s first line of defence against a range of online threats.