A US Department of Defense research lab developed the technology for the dark web

The dark web can expose anonymous users to potentially dangerous environments

Browsing the dark web requires onion routing, which prevents visitors from being identified and the locations from which they connect from being traced. This has been useful to activists in environments affected by political oppression or instability. However, those unfamiliar with navigating the space may encounter malware and network attacks from denizen hackers.

Technical vulnerabilities prevent full-proof anonymity when browsing the dark web

Despite encrypting data and relaying it within the Tor network, traffic between the network exit and the final destination is no longer hidden and can be captured. Law enforcement agencies can also attempt to deanonymize users by monitoring and matching data signal patterns entering and leaving the network via a correlation algorithm.

The dark web protects free speech from censorship and authoritarian oversight

Encrypted networks allow users with internet access anywhere in the world to view blocked content and avoid surveillance when communicating evidence of abuse to independent journalists. The same networks can support democracies by helping activists coordinate protests on dark web forums.

Accessing the dark web is legal in the US, the EU, and most countries worldwide

As long as users do not pay for illegal goods or services or acquire illegal content, they cannot be prosecuted. Those on the dark web include academics, researchers, and cybersecurity experts gathering threat intelligence on cybercriminals, cyberterrorists, and state actors, as well as protesters, activists, and grassroots organizers.

Instead of .com or similar, web addresses on the dark web end in 'd.onion'

Since the latest version of the onion routing protocol, dark web domain names consist of a random set of 56 alphanumeric characters followed by .onion (e.g., propublica.org → p53lf57qovyuvwsc6xnrppyply3vtqm7l6pcobkmyqsiofyeznfu5uqd.onion). The last character is always "d" due to the encryption algorithm's requirements.

Onion routing disguises internet traffic in layers resembling a nesting doll

Data is encrypted at least three times before being sent to a node—a server that can only decrypt one layer. Then, the underlying encrypted data is relayed to another node, and the process repeats until all layers are decrypted. Thousands of possible nodes make it extremely difficult to trace activity within the system.

As of April 2022, a million people access Facebook on the dark web monthly

While those using an anonymized web browser, such as Tor, have been able to access the social network's .onion site since 2014, the announcement marks a major milestone by the tech giant, which has worked to ensure its users can bypass restrictions by various governments and continue visiting the site.

The history of ARPANET and how it helped the US military during the Cold War

President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the Advanced Research Projects Agency in 1958, which recruited scientists to design the first large-scale computer network to support the American military during the Cold War. Academics would use the network to communicate via email among several US research universities.

Silk Road, the dark web's first widely used market, proved the real-world utility of bitcoin

Named after the ancient intercontinental trade network between China and the Roman Empire, the anonymous market was active from early 2011 to October 2013. Before it was shut down, approximately 10,000 products—70% of which were illegal and controlled prescription drugs—were bought and sold using the cryptocurrency.

Google only sorts and searches a fraction of the overall internet

The "surface web," consisting of billions of public webpages, excludes nonindexed digital content, such as corporate intranets and email inboxes. A deeper layer, called the dark web, is also hidden and requires special software to access.

The origin of the World Wide Web, plus a look at its first website and web browser

Invented by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 while working at CERN—home of the world's largest particle physics laboratory—the Web was developed to facilitate the sharing of information among scientists at institutions worldwide. By the end of 1990, the first Web server was operational as a proof-of-concept on a NeXT workstation.

The Manhattan Project created secret cities that didn’t appear on maps

To maintain secrecy, the US built three remote research facilities and entire “secret cities” to house thousands of workers and families. These communities—home to tens of thousands—were omitted from official maps until after World War II.

An LSD scientist's role in a US mind control project

Within a decade of LSD's discovery, the US government had launched a secret initiative involving hypnosis and hallucinogens. LSD researcher Louis Jolyon West conducted experiments for the CIA's MKUltra project, which focused on the potential of mind control. He later took part in a criminal trial that hinged on testimony whose sourcing was seemingly inspired by MKUltra experiments. This article explores light shed by West's personal archive.

Learn about the protocols that make navigating the internet possible

While TCP/IP sends data in packets to the correct destination and checks for errors, UDP omits such safety features to speed up data transfer for real-time communication and streaming. Software rules such as HTTP and HTTPS enable the transfer of content on the World Wide Web, while SMTP handles email messages between servers.

Explore a searchable map of underwater cables carrying internet traffic worldwide

The Submarine Cable Map provides users with data from TeleGeography's Transport Networks Research Service on individual submarine cables, including cable owners, suppliers, URLs, landing points, lengths, and notes of interest.

A private repository of millions of FOIA-requested documents

The Black Vault is one of the largest privately run archives of declassified documents in the world. Explore UFO sightings, doorways on Mars, and more.

Contactless credit cards descend from a batteryless Cold War listening device

The same physics that let Soviet spies eavesdrop on the US ambassador in 1945 underlie contactless payment methods today. The device is a passive chip powered wirelessly by incoming radio waves.

Practice encrypting and decrypting text using an online library of ciphers

This tool provides users with customizable protocols, including Caesar, Affine, and Vigenère ciphers, to hide messages in transformed text and convert them back into legible formats. Mechanisms are also available to convert text into other communication languages, such as Morse code and URL encoding.

A timeline of how Claude Code was used to execute cyberespionage

In September 2025, a Chinese state-sponsored group targeted 30 large tech companies, financial institutions, chemical manufacturing companies, and government agencies by manipulating Claude Code, having succeeded in infiltrating a small subset. The cyberattack is believed to have been the first of its scale carried out without major human intervention.

Understanding the Diffie-Hellman key exchange, an example of public key cryptography

Published in 1976 by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman, the system involves two parties combining each of their unique private keys with a public key using a mathematical function. The combinations are exchanged and mixed to establish a common key that no third party can determine. The Diffie-Hellman system underlies many encryption protocols for internet traffic.

Writer William Gibson invented the term 'cyberspace'

The science-fiction writer coined the term in his 1982 short story "Burning Chrome" to describe "a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts...A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding."

Palantir's software is widely speculated to have enabled Osama bin Laden's assassination

While Palantir has never publicly confirmed the use of its software in the 2011 assassination, its technology is widely speculated to have been a critical aspect of the operation. However, Palantir executives have never denied the claim, either, and have frequently commented on the software's important role in defending Western civilizations from terrorism.

Deep Space Network sites enable nonstop communication with distant spacecraft

Each DSN complex has multiple large, sensitive antennas that can receive weak radio signals from far-off spacecraft and send commands back to them. Their amplifiers are cooled to just above absolute zero to reduce electronic noise.

Internet sleuths solve secret message on Perseverance rover’s Mars parachute

In 2020, the Perseverance Rover landed on Mars, sending a message for the folks back home on its parachute. It took fewer than six hours for the Internet's collective forces to decode the secret slogan hidden in the parachute's colors and patterns, as well as the geographic coordinates of the earth-bound place where rocketry was perfected.

Some employers are using new technology to surveil remote workers

'Bossware' tools help employers make sure their remote workers aren't slacking off on the job, using surveillance technology to monitor employee computer activity and more.

In 2019, a laptop loaded with six of the worst malware in history and described as 'an exhibit of historical weaponry' sold for $1.3M.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

In 1915, workers recovered a submarine-like vessel from the Chicago River, prompting fears of German espionage

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

The history of many kitchen appliances involves unexpected discoveries and applications, including wartime radar turned hamster defroster and replacing an 'ice king' with heat-stealing boxes.

Experimental hantavirus vaccines and therapies, still under development, have long been funded by the US military.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

Discover the catastrophic consequences of a failure of the US electrical grid—something that is more likely than many Americans think.

In 1963, a basement renovation in Turkey revealed a passageway to a hidden, multilevel underground city that once housed as many as 20,000 people

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

During the French Revolution, a botanist's letter asking about "dear Rhus" (poison ivy) was intercepted, leading authorities to suspect he was conspiring with the Russians.

Most of the observable universe's volume consists of voids and supervoids—enormous regions of space with little to no galaxies, stars, or light.

Explore fun facts from the USPS, including unique post office buildings, a stamp that traveled past Pluto, and more.

'Shogun,' a 1980s TV series, helped popularize sushi in the US by stimulating an American interest in Japanese culture.

The US Constitution is widely regarded as the longest-standing written national constitution still in force—see how it has influenced rights worldwide.

While the first exchange-traded fund (a 'basket' of different assets that can be bought and sold on a stock exchange) in the US only launched in 1993, the global ETF market has grown to more than $10T in the short time since.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

The US first hosted the World Cup in 1994, a tournament that lives in soccer infamy for its poor planning and the murder of Colombian player Andres Escobar, who'd accidentally scored on his own net.

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

In 2009, the nation was gripped by the story of a missing young boy who was believed to be floating over Colorado in a homemade balloon, until it was revealed that he was at home the whole time.

Massive blooms of microscopic plankton called dinoflagellates produce the neon blue light seen in glowing tides.

The American Society of Civil Engineers' infrastructure report card gave the US a C in 2025, its highest grade since the project launched in 1998.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps is independent of Iran's regular army and is one of the most powerful and influential military-political organizations in the Middle East.

Researchers believe the brain consolidates memories, processes emotions, and plans for the future during dream states