Featured Image Credit: Getty Stock
Topics: Technology, Crime
William Morgan
A veteran hacker revealed some of the darkest things he witnessed while surfing the dark web, where everything from drugs to people could be sold to anonymous and untraceable individuals around the world.
Even though it is called the 'dark web', rather than being the product of some criminal mastermind, this network of websites is literally just a collection of pages that you cannot access from what its users call the 'surface web', where you are reading this article.
Rather than being hosted on public servers connected to the 'surface', these highly encrypted websites rely on private servers that scatter user data across other server 'nodes' at random until both the users and the service are essentially untraceable.
Naturally though, there aren't that many reasons to use this level of encryption and security unless you want to get into some illegal, or just plain messed up, stuff online. On the dark web's original black market, you could buy almost anything, so long as it was illegal - including uranium ore and hitman contracts.
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This has since, thankfully, been taken down and its operator, Ross Ulbricht, who went by the hacker name 'Dread Pirate Roberts', was jailed.
Though, not long after taking office in January 2025, President Trump pardoned the convicted drug-runner to fulfil his pledge to Libertarian and tech-focused voters in 2024 that he would free him from prison.
But a former member of the online underworld has revealed the even darker side to the hidden internet, where elite criminal hackers operate with zero sense of morality or ethics.
Speaking to VICE, the anonymous hacker with 30 years experience explained he'd once been a 'black hat' hacker - meaning he wasn't bound by any kind of ethical code and most likely had malicious motivations - however, he later became a 'white hat' - people who see themselves as an ethical security hacker.
Explaining his role, he told the publication he now does things such as 'hunt the criminals who are targeting hospitals or who are targeting the businesses that I'm looking out for'.
Recalling some of the most concerning things he's seen, the man shared: "I've watched hospitals get encrypted. People are left with a choice: do I pay to decrypt the data or risk lives?"
Speaking in 2021, ransomware appeared to be the guy's largest concern as he shared that there had been an 'significant increase' due to its profitability.
Going on to discuss some of the 'high stakes games' on the dark web, he explained that ransomware can be used on a national scale.
"You have national state actors who are doing what they need to do because the nation state that they're employed by wants them to do it," he said.
"There are financially motivated criminals who are looking for whatever way they can cash out, [and] there are some people who just want to see the world burn.
"Those are destructive hackers who will just go after systems because they just want to cause disruption."
He added: "Every single country has reason to weaponize these kind of attacks. [...] It's the perfect form of asymmetric warfare."
The anonymous man further claimed that he'd seen 'pretty much all western governments' going to the white hat hackers community for help.