Even though the darknet is not accessed by most internet users, there is still a lot of valuable information to be found on darknet platforms. Finding the right content can be a bit challenging, but thanks to new search engines such as Ichidan, it is becoming slightly easier. While it is not exactly the Google of the darknet, Ichidan certainly offers a lot of value to the right people.
Ichidan is a new Darknet Search Engine
Despite what most people would like to think, there are search engine-like tools for the darknet. You might assume that people keep a list of sites they access on the darknet and just stick to those. That is not the case by any means, as there is a lot of information to be accessed on the darknet which is perfectly legitimate. Finding the right information sources is a big challenge for a lot of users, though. That is all changing thanks to a service called Ichidan.
Ichidan is a new service which allows users to search Tor Onion sites. It is a bit similar to traditional search engines such as Google, although it was designed with a very different purpose in mind. After all, Google is mainly designed to collect user information and analyze behavior across different websites. Ichidan, on the other hand, aims to provide a selfless service to darknet users who are looking for specific Tor Onion sites or information. It can be a pretty useful tool for many people.
Security researchers, for example, are quite pleased with Ichidan so far. There are a lot of things people do not know about the darknet, mainly because that information was not accessible to them in the first place. Some darknet sites focus on providing information about services potentially exposed to external connections and which ports are more likely to be abused for this specific purpose. Interested parties can even try to connect to such servers from those pages and brute-force their way in.
All of this demonstrates there is a lot more to the darknet than originally assumed. Most of the information we have on the darknet is the direct result of research conducted by security experts. However, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of hidden services about which we know nothing. While not all of these efforts may focus on nefarious activity these days, it is clear that cybercriminals have come up with different solutions to embed powerful services into regular Onion sites.
One particularly interesting thing that services such as Ichidan have shown is that the dark web is slowly shrinking in size. That may come as a rather big surprise to a lot of people. However, quite a few marketplaces have recently been shut down. Law enforcement agencies all over the world are cracking down on Tor-based activity. According to the latest OnionScan, the dark web has shrunk by as much as 85%, which is a shocking amount.
Services such as Ichidan will only become even more important to interested parties as the darknet continues to shrink. With the information becoming so centralized in its own way, a search engine of this magnitude will make it easier to crack down on other illegal activity. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Ichidan is not the first tool of its kind, though, as Shodan works in a similar manner to discover internet-exposed services.
