In this video, we're going to be talking about the brave browser and the darknet.
So the darknet is essentially the UN indexed part of the Internet.
And you're probably going to hear a lot of scary stories about the dark web, the Darknet, things like
media news stories talking about, well, there's a lot of illicit trade, there's sex trafficking drugs
you could hire hit men on on the dark web.
And there's a lot of criminal activity there.
And while there is a lot of criminal activity on the dark Web, because it is essentially the indexed
part of the Internet.
It's also, well, really just an index part of the Internet.
So if I pull up Google or Yahoo or Bing or whatever, Yandex, I'm not going to be able to browse these
dark Web websites.
Typically, it's not going to be able to see it because it's, well, not indexed.
And while there is a lot of illicit activity on the dark web, there is a lot of illicit activity on
the clear web, which are things that Google and Yahoo and Bing and whatnot will be able to index also.
Now, the dark web isn't all bad stuff.
There are legitimate websites on the dark web, things like Facebook's on there.
A lot of news stations are on there also and what not.
It's really, again, just parts of the Internet that are not indexed.
However, if we're doing an investigation and we need to be able to look at these different websites
on the dark Web, we're going to need something like the Tor browser.
Or we're going to need something that's able to access the Tor network or the these onion routers.
And we'll talk about that in a moment.
Now the easiest way is to grab the Tor browser.
And if we go to Tor project at Org, it'll take us here and we could download this.
Now.
The Tor browser is really cool.
It's a browser built on Firefox.
You can download it for Windows for Linux for OS x on Android phones.
And the great thing about it is it's designed for privacy.
It's designed to block trackers.
It'll block third party trackers and isolate them so ads can't follow you.
Cookies automatically clear when you're done browsing and your browsing history goes away when you're
done.
It's great to defend against surveillance.
Resist fingerprinting, multi layer encryption.
And typically we'll allow you to browse sites that you normally wouldn't be able to.
If your say in a country that's that has heavy censorship, tor browser works really well.
Now it's also widely used by journalists, by security professionals, privacy advocates and whatnot,
not just criminals, because again, you have that pretty incredible amount of security browsing Internet
with Tor and the Onion Network.
Now, if you're trying to download this at work, you're probably going to have a problem because again,
because this allows for anonymous browsing work networks will typically block the Tor browser.
School networks will typically block the Tor browser and what not.
And this isn't just because they can't snoop on you.
It's also because for legal reasons, that they have to be able to comply, that they're able they're
doing their due diligence to protect people from certain websites and whatnot.
And protect the network.
So they're going to try to block this.
So if you're trying to download this app at work and you're not able to.
That's usually what the issue is.
You're probably going to have to wait till you get home or go on to a public network that doesn't block
it to download it.
Now, this is an example from the EFF on how Tor works.
Now, typically, if you excuse me, if you're going to the Internet, it goes from your computer to
your ISP to wherever you're going.
And that's a pretty straight path.
And if someone's going to trace back, it's not going to be very difficult to be able to fingerprint
your browser, be able to view your activities.
They can probably figure out information about your computer, your browsing history, since all that
typically isn't blown out unless you configure a browser and lock it down, which a lot of people unfortunately
don't.
And also, it is a very straight path.
It's not a multilayer path to get there.
However, if you're using the Tor browser.
In this example, Ellis has a Tor client and it picks a random path that is going to be encrypted.
So in this path, it takes a pretty straight path.
So we have all these different computers here.
These are these represent onion gateways, essentially.
These are computers that are in servers that are running a protocol that allows the Tor browser to see
it in and use it.
So.
In this example, Alice's connection goes from this this router to this router to this router, and
then finally to Bob, which she's trying to get to that website or server, and then it takes a path
back.
Now if someone is trying to.
Trace you back.
Trace back to you.
Well, then they're going to be able to hop back here.
They're going to see this this router here.
And that's not going to be you.
It's going to be pretty far away.
And then the traffic is going to be encrypted.
They would actually have to be able to trace it all the way back through these various onion routers
back to you again, over a encrypted channel.
So it's going to be really difficult.
And again, this is really why the Tor browser is really great.
Now, of course you could use things like a VPN to encrypt your traffic.
However, Tor browser adds an extra layer of security by hopping through all these random paths to get
to where it's going.
Now the.
The Onion Network, the the dark Web websites, you'll be able to identify it by a dot onion extension.
It's not going to be a dot com or dot org or whatnot.
It will be a dot onion address.
Now, these addresses are not going to work in a standard browser.
It needs to be able to go through the onion router.
So.
On this page here I have a brave browser which essentially chrome or chromium.
The page can't be displayed.
However, if I pull up a tor browser here.
And once it's connected here, I can simply paste the URL in here and it comes right up.
Now the Tor browser will typically operate slower because again, we are taking that random connected
path to where we're going.
So do expect the Tor browser to be slower when you're when you're accessing.
The other thing is since we're since we're using a.
Oh, taking a random path where we're being dropped out of a random server, essentially.
The language is probably going to be different from what you're used to.
So if I pull up Google here.
This comes up in English.
Sometimes it might come in German and my command Dutch, it might come out in Italian or whatnot.
Again, it's going to be randomized for what country?
The route, the the exit node is essentially.
And so don't be too thrown off by that.
If you pull up a if you pull up Google or Bing or DuckDuckGo or whatever, and it's in a different language,
it's probably because the exit node is going to is in a different country again, which is good because.
It.
If someone's going to try to try to come back and try to identify you.
It's going to initially look like you're not like you're in a different country.
Kind of like how a VPN will make it look like you're in a different country.
However, using Tor, it's all randomized.
So this is the Tor browser.
Again, it's it's really useful.
It's a fantastic browser.
It is going to be slower when you're browsing the Internet because of the extra layer of security.
Certain websites may be a little bit of a pain when you're trying to log into it.
You probably have to go through a bunch of captions and and.
Improve that you're not a bot because all that traffic is encrypted in it really doesn't like it, however.
If you're doing investigations and Tor browser is a fantastic way to go because again, it's very secure.
It's it's encrypted traffic, It's randomizing the path that it's taking to get to where you're going.
And if you're going to do a dark web investigation, you absolutely need to use a Tor browser or something
that goes through the on your network.
The alternative is if we use something like the brave browser, which I like, I use a brave browser
as a kind of a daily driver, because it's it's pretty secure.
It's based on chromium.
But if I go over here on this little sidebar here, I can click on here and I could do a new private
window with Tor.
K.
And I'm just going to block the diagnostic here.
And what you want to do is you want to look here or tour connected successfully.
You want to wait for this thing to actually connect to the Tor network before you do anything.
Now, before I kind of get to that one website here, that onion link, but now that I've connected
here, it should actually come up here.
So let's give this a second, see if it actually comes up.
And I can see it spinning there.
And here we go.
It actually pulled up the website here and let me type in Google dot com.
And see what this does here.
Okay.
And that comes up in English.
So all that's good.
So all this is working properly.
Again, I have the Tor browser here.
Or actually have the brave browser here running over Tor.
And I'm able to look into all this different stuff here.
I wouldn't I'm not able to normally.
Again, if I pull up a page here and I try this on the regular browser section, it's blocked, it doesn't
work.
I can also pull up things like Firefox here.
Click that in here.
And it's also likewise going to have problems.
It won't be able to resolve that Onion address.
Now, if you want to install Brave on your Linux machine, it is fairly easy.
You could actually go go over and you could type in.
Now let me get out of here.
Okay, We close out here.
There are tutorials on how to install Brave for Linux and if you're going to install it for the Trace
Labs.
Trace Labs is a Debian based system.
Here you can go to brave dot com and then if you click on Linux it'll actually give you information
here you can and it you could simply just copy and paste these commands in here to install the brave
browser.
So again, this was about Tor and the dark dark web essentially, again, the index part of the internet.
Thank you for watching.
I'll see you next video.