CRATOR: a Dark Web Crawler

Dark web crawling is a complex process that involves specific methodologies and techniques to navigate the Tor network and extract data from hidden services. This study proposes a general dark web crawler designed to extract pages handling security protocols, such as captchas, efficiently. Our appro...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2024-05
Main Authors: De Pascale, Daniel, Cascavilla, Giuseppe, Tamburri, Damian A, Willem-Jan Van Den Heuvel
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cybersecurity
Intelligence gathering
Privacy
Threat evaluation
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Dark web crawling is a complex process that involves specific methodologies and techniques to navigate the Tor network and extract data from hidden services. This study proposes a general dark web crawler designed to extract pages handling security protocols, such as captchas, efficiently. Our approach uses a combination of seed URL lists, link analysis, and scanning to discover new content. We also incorporate methods for user-agent rotation and proxy usage to maintain anonymity and avoid detection. We evaluate the effectiveness of our crawler using metrics such as coverage, performance and robustness. Our results demonstrate that our crawler effectively extracts pages handling security protocols while maintaining anonymity and avoiding detection. Our proposed dark web crawler can be used for various applications, including threat intelligence, cybersecurity, and online investigations.
ISSN:2331-8422