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Darknet's The Black holes Of The Internet
By: Darren.Miller
You may reprint or publish this article free of charge as long as the bylines are included.
Original URL (The Web version of the article)
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Darknet's The Black holes Of The Internet
Title
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Darknet's The Black holes Of The Internet
Black Holes & Darknet's
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A “Black Hole” can be defined many ways. One definition is
“An area of space-time with a gravitational field so intense
that its escape velocity is equal to or exceeds the speed of
light”, another is “A great void or abyss”, and yet another
and more relevant definition is “What data has fallen into
if it disappears mysteriously between its origin and
destination sites” For instance, an e-mail that never
reaches it’s destination and the sender never receives a
bounce or undeliverable message.
Darknet's - The Internet – A Million Points Of Light
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Just for a moment, try to visualize the Internet like a
clear night sky with millions of stars. Some stars are dim
while others are bright, and others appears to blink on an
off. Now turn your attention to what you “don’t” see. What
appears to be the black spaces between stars in the night
sky. In many cases, there are stars there, just to faint to
see with the naked eye. However, great voids of darkness
could be the result of a black hole, an area of space where
nothing that goes in, not even light, can escape.
There are places like this on the Internet. Some are there
by accident, maybe through the incorrect configuration of a
router or group of Internet hosts. But there are those areas
of Internet dark space that are there quite on purpose.
Darknet’s, unlike honey nets or honey pots, where malicious
activity can be monitored and recorded, appear as black
holes in the Internet address space. Any data,
communications, or request that falls into a Darknet is lost
for ever. The sending host never receives a response.
A Darknet, intentionally configured, is a great research and
monitoring tool. In many cases, these systems are used as
early warning systems. For instance, say a new worm appears
and starts probing the Internet address space for live hosts
to infect. Many worms do so in a blind fashion, scanning and
probing many areas of address space on the Internet. Because
Darknet’s are relatively quite areas of the Internet, any
spike in incoming activity may be considered suspicious. As
the packets of data stream into the Darknet, they are
collected and can then be analyzed. Because the host the
packet originated from never receives a response, it may
continue to stream its data into the Darknet hoping to
finally find a live host. Unfortunately for the sending
host, it never will.
Conclusion
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If you are interested in learning more about Darknet’s,
maybe even setting one up your self, take a look at the work
done by Team Cyrmru. They have posted detailed information
on how to construct a Darknet and provide statistical
information on their Darknet servers and other Internet
network monitoring initiatives
About the Author
About The Author
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Darren Miller is an Information Security Consultant with
over sixteen years experience. He has written many
technology & security articles, some of which have been
published in nationally circulated magazines & periodicals.
please visitus at
http://www.defendingthenet.com.
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