Child pornography websites on the darknet

Abstract

Cybercrime has been moving to the darknet which provides privacy and anonymity to users. Despite international efforts to eradicate child pornography, websites to distribute lurid materials are found to be resilient. Due to the significance of the criminality, law enforcement authorities have taken covert measures to dismantle the leadership of these websites, focusing on arresting the organizers and core members. In this paper, two cases involving child pornography websites were examined to disclose how these websites were structured and managed as well as investigation strategies and tactics employed by investigation agencies. Some similarities were identified during pre-arrest and after-arrest stages for an investigation goal and evidence verification, respectively. However, during a deanonymisation stage the two agencies used different investigation strategies to approach and arrest the target criminals. It is very likely that darknet websites will be managed in diverse manners, or that more anonymity and encryption will make pornography circulation structure invisible and unreachable. In this study, it was argued that perfect anonymity is not provided to the darknet users and that investigation agencies should make technical and social engineering efforts to deanonymise identities of criminals.