I recently read a novel entitled Daemon by Daniel Suarez and he mentioned the “Dark Internet”. I was intrigued so I did a little research. The Dark Internet refers to unreachable network hosts on the Internet or any portion of the Internet that cannot be reached by computers attached to the public Internet.

Domain Name Servers (DNS) are set up to convert website names like www.klat.com (URL) into a string of digits known as an Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) address such as 123.456.789.011. If a website is not listed on a DNS, it cannot be reached even if you have a name that used to work. If the IPv4 address number is not registered with an internet service provider (ISP), you cannot reach it through the public Internet.

Some parts of the Dark Internet originated because of confusion during the Internet’s organic growth and decay or by mis-configuration of routers. Sometimes, contract disputes between service providers can result in a blockage of access to/from some parts of the Internet. Other parts are left over closed military networks from the old MILNET which was around in the days of ARPANET, the ancestor of our current Internet. It is also possible that hackers can hijack Internet routers to isolate a section of the Internet and create a Dark Internet of their own. There is a concern among security professionals that the Dark Internet can be the origin of denial of services attacks or floods of email on websites. They light up briefly and then disappear.

As much as 5% of the net hosts, over 100 million, may be part of the Dark Internet. It has also been hinted that various criminal interests and intelligence agencies make use of this underground part of the global Internet.