New frontiers of cybercrime

Abstract

Although cybercrime is a relatively recent phenomenon, criminologists have accumulated a considerable amount of information regarding its condition, determining factors, victimological aspects, personal characteristics of offenders; they continue their constant (and, often, more than successful) search for new ways to counteract it. However, the overwhelming majority of research examining the Internet in one way or another describes but a small part of it — the «visible» net, known to most of the users. The paper discusses the necessity of conducting a criminological analysis of cybercrime that would take into consideration the deep segment of the world wide web — the dark web, a significant part of which is the TOR network (TOR standing for The Onion Router) whose contents are not indexed by standard search engines like Google or Yandex. The author did a monitoring of the «invisible» web in 2012–2015, which allowed him to single out key components of the TOR network crime structure, which have their own prominent characteristics. TOR is a free and open software for secondgeneration «onion routing» that makes it possible to establish an anonymous network of virtual relays for transferring encrypted data, or, to be more exact, a system of proxy servers for anonymous network connection protected against surveillance; the author suggests viewing TOR network crime as a relatively new, independent type of cybercrime, distinguished from other types by the criminological characteristics of its offences. The author also points out that it is necessary to reconsider the existing results of criminological research of regular cybercrimes