Legislator and expert sounds alarm about government approach to danger of malicious software from parts of internet rarely glimpsed by average users
ALLEN.AUYEUNG@SCMP.COM
UPDATED : Tuesday, 03 May, 2016, 8:31am
Duncan Wong said the “dark web” isn’t necessarily something to fear. Photo: K. Y. Cheng
Hong Kong authorities are powerless to police clandestine activities flourishing in the “deep web” – the unseen portion of the internet that makes up 96 per cent of online content – because there is no legal basis to do so, according to local cybersecurity experts.
Speaking to the Post, Duncan Wong, director of security and data sciences at the Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute, saidonly four per cent of the web can be got to by conventional search engines.
The rest, called the deep web, is unsearchable and password-protected. Inside the deep web, there is also an area known as the “dark web”, which can only be accessed using identity-hiding encryption technology.
“The dark web is a collection of websites. This collection can be accessed anonymously,” said Wong, who frequently surfs it to gather intelligence on the latest hacking trends. “A part of the dark web is pretty dark. People use it to exchange malicious software, like recently popular ransomware.
“On the dark web, people are also selling drugs and some websites are related to pornography.”
Ransomware is malware that encrypts files in victims’ computers, rendering them unrecoverable. Victims are then told to pay a ransom in bitcoin to unlock them.
As of mid-March, the Hong Kong Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Centre had received 18 reports about the use of ransomware. Victims included small businesses and non-governmental organisations, and the team believed there were many more unreported cases.
Legislator Charles Mok criticised the government’s responses to threats from the web. Photo: Nora Tam
While the latest attacks’ origin was unclear, Wong said the type of malware involved was known to not infect computer systems operating in Russian.
Information technology lawmaker Charles Mok said he believed it was impossible for law enforcers by themselves to regulate the dark web as the bulk of its activities took place abroad.
“It’s something that exists, unless you completely cut yourself off from the internet. It’s impossible to shut it down,” said Mok.
He said the government had been passive in helping the public protect themselves.
“The government has always been late in understanding the problems,” Mok said.
Wong said the best way for businesses to protect themselves was to regularly back up files on a computer not always hooked up to the internet.
But he said people should not fear the dark web, which also serves as a channel for whistle-blowers who want to share sensitive information anonymously.
“I don’t think there is anything to worry about,” Wong said. “There is no way to stop the dark web, and it has its value for different people. It will be there forever. You can shut down some of the drug dealing sites like Silk Road and then Silk Road 2.0 is out.”
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-crime/article/1940520/hong-kong-government-powerless-against-deep-web-threat
