In recent news, the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) in India has announced a ‘Darkathon’, aimed at encouraging cyber experts to devise strategies for decoding the anonymous realm of dark web markets. The move underscores NCB’s emerging significance as the principal agency in charge of drug law enforcement in India.
Understanding Darkathon-2022
The Darkathon-2022 is essentially a competition where participants are required to put forth a “solution” based on the crawling of the dark web. Their solution must be able to identify and catalogue the darknet markets peddling drugs, comprising an automatic system to introduce new markets and eliminate inactive ones. It should also spot drug traffickers operating in India and the specific drugs being sold, along with the digital footprints of active drug traffickers. This initiative gains high importance with the skyrocketing number of drug seizures through parcel or courier consignments post-pandemic, a large portion of which traces back to drug trafficking via darknet markets – registering a surge of nearly 250%.
Demystifying the Darknet and its Associated Concerns
The internet can be envisaged as three layers. The first layer or the public layer comprises commonly utilised sites like Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and LinkedIn, accounting for merely 4% of the total internet. The deep web forms the second layer and consists of inaccessible databases where sensitive data (government private data, bank data, cloud data, etc.) are stored and selectively accessible. Finally, the third layer or the darknet, a part of the ‘Deep Web’, is an encrypted network accessible only using special software like TOR (The Onion Router), or I2P (Invisible Internet Project). Materials on the dark web don’t appear in regular online searches, ensuring high anonymity levels.
A 2016 study titled ‘Cryptopolitik and the Darknet’ examined content on the TOR network and found that out of 2,723 websites, 1,547 – or 57% – hosted illicit material such as drugs, illegal pornography, and hacking tools among others. There is also the issue of streaming site log-in details, including Netflix, being traded inexpensively on the dark web marketplaces.
Despite its notorious reputation, activists, particularly those under suppressing regimes, often resort to this network to bypass government censorship. The network proved to be a pivotal communication medium during the Arab Spring.
Darknet in the Indian Context
The Information Technology Act, 2000, under the aegis of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, governs cybercrime in India. However, out of its provisions, merely six sections deal with cybercrime. With rapidly evolving digital dynamics, it’s evident that India requires a comprehensive criminal code addressing cybercrime, ideally falling under the Ministry of Home Affairs which oversees policing issues. Furthermore, there is a pressing demand for law enforcement officers trained in changing cyber trends who are solely dedicated to dealing with cybercrime and not periodically rotated into other police units. The Darkathon-2022 launched by NCB is one such step towards keeping pace with these changes.
Source: ET
Last Modified: February 15, 2024