DARK WEB INVESTIGATION

GUIDE
 Contents
1. Introduction 3
2. Setting up Chrome for Dark Web Access 5
3. Setting up Virtual Machines for Dark Web Access 9
4. Starting Points for Tor Investigations 20
5. Technical Clues for De-Anonymizing Hidden Services 22
5.1 Censys.io SSL Certificates 23

5.2 Searching Shodan for Hidden Services 24

5.3 Checking an IP Address for Tor Usage 24

5.4 Additional Resources 25

6. Conclusion 26

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Dark Web Investigation Guide
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1. Introduction

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Introduction
There is a lot of confusion about what the dark web is vs. the deep web. The dark web is part of the
Internet that is not accessible through traditional means. It requires that you use a technology like
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Tor (The Onion Router) or I2P (Invisible Internet Project) in order to access websites, email or other
services.

The deep web is slightly different. The deep web is made of all the webpages or entire websites that
have not been crawled by a search engine. This could be because they are hidden behind paywalls
or require a username and password to access.

We are going to be setting up access to the dark web with a focus on the Tor network. We are going
to accomplish this in two different ways.

The first way is to use the Tor Browser to get Google Chrome connected to the the Tor network. This is
the less private and secure option, but it is the easiest to set up and use and is sufficient for accessing
material on the dark web.

The second way is to use a virtual machine setup to create a much more secure environment to
perform investigations. Don’t be afraid of the terminology, this is pretty straightforward. It’s also a bit
more resource intensive, but that shouldn’t be a problem as long as your computer is reasonably
modern.

The reason we focus on Chrome is that we hope you are going to take Hunchly along for the ride so
that you can automatically capture hidden service pages, extract EXIF metadata from photos, and
leverage some of the investigative tools in Hunchly to make your life easier.

Let’s get started!

!
WARNING
This is important. This guide is NOT a guide on how to remain hidden, anonymous or
how to perform undercover operations online. This goes for the dark web or otherwise.

This guide is here to help you get setup using Google Chrome to access Tor resources,
and how to leverage Hunchly to capture evidence while you do it.

There are numerous references online that you can find that will help you with staying
hidden. This is not one of them.

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Dark Web Investigation Guide
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2. Setting up Chrome
for Dark Web Access

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Setting up Chrome for Dark Web Access

Setting Up Chrome to Access Tor

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Sometimes you need to quickly refer to a resource on the dark web and your anonymity is less of a
concern. The following steps will show you how you can use Tor Browser to proxy Chrome connections
and easily access Tor hidden services. It is worth noting that using the Buscador virtual machine
(shown later) allows you to open Chrome and browse to hidden services directly without any additional
configuration.

Be warned this is the least secure method for accessing Tor with Chrome but I often use it for quick
hidden service checks.

Step 1
Download and install Tor Browser: https://www.torproject.org/download/download

Step 2
Download and install Google Chrome: https://www.google.com/chrome/

Step 3
Start Tor browser and leave it running. This will provide our connection to Tor for us.

Step 4
Now we need to get Chrome to proxy its traffic through Tor. The setup is slightly different for each
operating system:

Windows
1 You should have a Chrome shortcut on your desktop. Right-click on it and select Copy.

2 Right-click on your desktop and select Paste.

3 Rename the new shortcut to Chrome Tor.

4 Right-click on the Chrome Tor shortcut and select Properties.

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Setting up Chrome for Dark Web Access

Step 4 continued...
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5 In the target field add the following after the chrome.exe part:

--proxy-server="socks5://localhost:9150" --host-resolverrules="MAP *
~NOTFOUND , EXCLUDE localhost"

6 Click the Apply button and then click OK.

7 Make sure you have all Chrome windows closed and then double click your Chrome Tor
shortcut.

8 You should see Chrome open and you can now proceed to step 5 below to verify for your
connection.

Mac OS X
1 If Chrome is open, close it (right-click on Chrome in the dock and select Quit).

2 Open your /Applications folder and go to Utilities.

3 Double-click on Terminal.

4 Copy and paste this command into the Terminal window, and press Enter:

/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --proxy-

4 server="socks5://localhost:9150" --host-resolverrules="MAP * ~NOTFOUND ,
EXCLUDE localhost"/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\
Chrome --proxy-server="socks5://localhost:9150" --host-resolverrules="MAP *
~NOTFOUND , EXCLUDE localhost"

5 Chrome should open and you can now proceed to step 5 below to verify for your
connection.

Linux
Generally Chrome will be installed as google-chrome and can be accessed from anywhere in
your terminal. As Linux installs vary greatly we are going to assume this is the case.

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Setting up Chrome for Dark Web Access

Step 4 continued...
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1 If Chrome is open, close it.

2 Open your terminal application.

3 Copy and paste the following command into the terminal window:

google-chrome --proxy-server="socks5://localhost:9150" --host-resolverrules="MAP

* ~NOTFOUND , EXCLUDE localhost"/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/
Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --proxy-server="socks5://localhost:9150" --host-
resolverrules="MAP * ~NOTFOUND , EXCLUDE localhost"

4 You should see Chrome open and you can now proceed to step 5 below to verify for your
connection.

Step 5
Now we need to verify that everything is working. In your Chrome Tor browser window head to:
https://check.torproject.org
You should see a message that you are connected to Tor but not using a Tor Browser. This indicates that
you have set everything up successfully.

Validating that we are connected to Tor.

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Dark Web Investigation Guide
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3. Setting up Virtual Machines

for Dark Web Access

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Setting up Virtual Machines for Dark Web Access

Setting up Virtual Machines for Dark Web Investigations

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A far more secure method for performing your dark web investigations is to use virtual machines to
both protect you on a network level and at a host level. We will setup two virtual machines, one that
will be your investigative machine and one that will forward all of your Internet traffic through Tor. All
of the software used is free, and setting it all up is not as hard as it may sound.

We will use Buscador, an OSINT-focused virtual machine by David Westcott and Michael Bazzell,
for our investigation virtual machine. The gateway virtual machine that will forward all traffic will use
Whonix.

One awesome thing with Buscador is that it is configured to automatically allow you to browse both
Tor and I2P by default. So you may wonder to yourself: well why go through all of the trouble of setting
up these two virtual machines? The answer is that with our setup, we will route all traffic through Tor.
This means any command line tools or additional software on Buscador will also use Tor and not just
your web browser.

If you don’t feel like setting up the full “paranoid” version, you can stop after getting Buscador imported
and starting it up, and skip all of the networking / Whonix parts.

Downloading the Prerequisites

Step 1
Download and install Virtual Box for your operating system here:
https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Step 2
Download the Buscador virtual machine:
https://inteltechniques.com/buscador/

Step 3
Download the Whonix Gateway virtual machine (only the gateway is required):
https://www.whonix.org/wiki/VirtualBox/CLI

Once you have all three downloaded and Virtual Box installed we can now begin importing the virtual
machines. First we will import the Whonix Gateway.

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Setting up Virtual Machines for Dark Web Access
Step 4
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From the File Menu select Import Appliance. On the next screen click the folder icon and browse to the
location where you stored the Whonix Gateway download:

Specifying the path to the Whonix Gateway.

Step 5
Click the Continue button and on the resulting screen click Import and then Agree.

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Setting up Virtual Machines for Dark Web Access
Step 6
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The import can take a few seconds to a few minutes depending on your computer hardware. When it is
finished you should see the virtual machine in the left hand panel of virtual box as shown below.

Whonix gateway successfully imported.

Step 7
Click on the Whonix gateway virtual machine and then click the Start button above it. You will see a new
window open with the Whonix Gateway starting up.

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Setting up Virtual Machines for Dark Web Access
Step 8
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Now you can login by using the user “root” and the password “changeme”. This should kickoff the
Whonix setup. If you do not see the setup screen shown below, simply type: whonixsetup and hit Enter
on your keyboard.

Whonix setup ready to run.

Step 9
Hit Enter with the OK button highlighted, and in the next screen hit Enter again. You should see a
message that Tor has been successfully enabled. Hit OK and you can now minimize the window.

NOTE: to get your mouse out of the virtual machine you hit CTRL+ALT on your keyboard
(CTRL+COMMAND on Mac).

Step 10
Now we’ll import the Buscador virtual machine. Click File - Import Appliance, then select the location of
your Buscador download and click Import.

Step 11
Once it is successfully imported we need to change its network configuration to force all traffic out of our
Whonix gateway. Select the Buscador virtual machine and click the Settings button.

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Setting up Virtual Machines for Dark Web Access
Step 12
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Click on the Network tab and set Interface 1 to connect to the internal network Whonix as shown below.

Setting the Buscador network interface.

Step 13
Click the OK button which will close the Settings panel. Now select the Buscador virtual machine and
click Start.

Step 14
Once the virtual machine has started the password is: osint to login to the machine.

Buscador login screen.

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Setting up Virtual Machines for Dark Web Access
Step 15
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Now we need to reconfigure the Buscador VM so that it will route all of its traffic through our Whonix
gateway. Click the Network icon shown below, and select the PCI Ethernet Connected item to expand
it and then click Wired Settings.

Selecting the network interface to configure.

Step 16
In the next view click the Gear icon in the bottom right as shown below.

Click the gear icon to see the properties page.

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Setting up Virtual Machines for Dark Web Access

Step 17
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Click the OK button which will close the Settings panel. Now select the Buscador virtual machine and
click Start.

Step 18
In the properties screen we need to make a number of adjustments, and each are labelled in the figure
below. When you are done, click the Apply button.

1 Switch the first dropdown from “Automatic (DHCP)” to Manual.

2 In the address field enter: 10.152.152.11

3 In the netmask field enter: 255.255.192.0

4 In the gateway field enter: 10.152.152.10

5 Switch the DNS Automatic toggle to: OFF

6 In the Server field enter: 10.152.152.10

Setting the network adapter properties in Buscador.

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Setting up Virtual Machines for Dark Web Access
Step 19
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Once you have clicked Apply toggle the interface off and then on for it to pick up your new settings. You
should see your IP address be set to 10.152.152.11 as shown below.

Toggle network interface to pick up newly configured IP address.

Step 20
Awesome, now we can test that our connection is going out through Tor. Click the Browsers shortcut
in the left hand toolbar in Buscador and double click the Google Chrome icon. Once Chrome starts
browse to: https://check.torproject.org

The Browsers shortcut in the Buscador toolbar.

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Setting up Virtual Machines for Dark Web Access
Step 21
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If all goes well you should see a message similar to the one below that indicates you are connected to
the Tor network.

Chrome working through the Tor network.

Step 22
Now we just have one more slight thing to change in Chrome to enable us to browse to hidden services.
By default Buscador will allow you to visit .onion addresses through a Tor proxy. We need to disable this
extension by going to: chrome://extensions in your Chrome URL bar. Find the Proxy SwitchyOmega
extension and toggle it off as shown below.

Disabling the Proxy SwitchyOmega extension.

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Setting up Virtual Machines for Dark Web Access
Step 23
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Great! Now we can test that we can reach hidden services by clicking the Duck (Onion) bookmark as
shown. If DuckDuckGo (the hidden service) loads up for you then you are done with your setup and you
can begin doing some investigations on Tor!

Viewing the DuckDuckGo hidden service.

OPTIONAL
Improve your Dark Web Investigations with Hunchly

Hunchly has a number of tools that can really enhance your

investigations both on the surface web and the dark web. We
might be a bit biased but we strongly suggest you take it with
you when you go on those dark web deep dives.

Grab your free 30-day trial today at https://hunch.ly/try-it-now!

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Dark Web Investigation Guide
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4. Starting Points for

Tor Investigations

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Starting Points for Tor Investigations

Often first-time dark web investigators are faced with the immediate problem of finding a starting point
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to begin dipping their toes in. There are a few resources that you can tap into that can help create a
starting point for your investigations.

1 Hunchly Daily Dark Web Report

We offer a free service that emails a spreadsheet of hidden services each day. It will tell you any new
hidden services discovered, and a historical listing of hidden services that are currently up or down.

2 Reddit/r/onions
This is a good place where Reddit contributors are discussing hidden services on Tor and can
sometimes yield good starting points for investigations.

3 DeepDotWeb.com
This is a news site for all things dark web, and they also include up to date information on dark web
marketplaces on Tor. Definitely a site to watch or use as a jumping off point.

Using any one of these resources will give you a place to start accessing Tor hidden services and start
to see how they operate. You’ll be pleasantly surprised that they work exactly like surface websites.

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Dark Web Investigation Guide
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5. Technical Clues for De-

Anonymizing Hidden Services

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Technical Clues for De-Anonymizing Hidden Services

Technical Tips for Investigations on Tor

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Often there are subtle clues that a hidden service exposes that might help you track down where it
lives for “real” on the Internet. This can vary from misguided hidden service administrators setting up
SSL certificates to server headers that you can examine in Shodan and other sites.

5.1 Censys.io SSL Certificates

It is always interesting when a Tor hidden service has an associated SSL certificate deployed to their
server. The traffic within Tor is already encrypted so this is largely not needed, however, sometimes you
will find that someone has made the mistake of setting one up.

You can actually search through Censys.io for these tidbits of information. For example, to find all surface
web sites that have a .onion SSL certificate (meaning they are already de-anonymized potentially):

443.https.tls.certificate.parsed.names: onion

This should give you a list of IP addresses where there were SSL certificates that had hidden service
addresses in them.

Censys.io search for SSL certificates with onion in their name.

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Technical Clues for De-Anonymizing Hidden Services

5.2 Searching Shodan for Hidden Services

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Using much the same technique, we can actually search Shodan for .onions either by doing an SSL
certificate search, or just a general query. You can also substitute the .onion with the full address of the
hidden service you are interested in as well.

ssl:“.onion”

For a general query you can simply do:

“.onion”

By examining the results you can spot any sites that may be misconfigured that may indicate where they
are located.

Shodan result showing a hidden service and its IP address.

5.3 Checking an IP Address for Tor Usage

Sometimes you will be on the opposite end of an investigation where you have an IP address and
you aren’t sure if the user was on Tor or not. The Tor Project makes a handy tool that allows you to
determine whether an IP address was connected to Tor on a particular date.

You can use the tool here: https://metrics.torproject.org/exonerator.html

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Technical Clues for De-Anonymizing Hidden Services

5.4 Additional Resources

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There are some excellent articles, blog posts and tools for investigating hidden services on Tor. Here are
some personal favourites:

Finding the Real Origin IPs Hiding Behind CloudFlare or Tor - SecJuice

Securing a Web Hidden Service

Investigating Using the Dark Web (Presentation)

OnionScan (tool)

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Dark Web Investigation Guide
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6. Conclusion

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Conclusion
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Dark web investigations are not as scary as one might think, but it is important to have your investigation
goals set out before you start poking around. Think about your target, the risk of you being discovered,
and ultimately what you are trying to glean.

The rest of it is just simply applying all of your investigative knowledge like you would any other
investigation. Look for email addresses, try to spot patterns, and more than anything be tenacious.

If you need a hand with anything or have any questions please just send me a note: [email protected]

Happy hunting!

Justin Seitz

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www.hunch.ly