It was designed to serve an army, it was designed to secure privacy, it was designed for whistleblowers to be anonymous but here it is, serving the criminals and facilitating them to launch attack against countries, governments and its people. Yes I am going to talk about the online anonymity network Tor.
Tor is a network of virtual tunnel that allows individual and groups to improve their privacy and security on the Internet. It Facilitates software developers to create new communication tools with better privacy features. Tor is used by different intelligence agencies around the globe for information gathering without leaving their traces. There are numerous known and unknown application where Tor can be used.
How it works
Tor helps in distributing user’s Internet traffic over several different places around the globe. So no single point can link to origin or destination of transaction. To create a private network pathway with Tor, the user’s software or client builds a path of encrypted connections through relays on the network. The circuit is provided one hop at a time and the following nodes knows about the nodes which are providing the data and which are receiving the data. No individual node ever knows the complete path that a data packet has taken. The user’s client software negotiates a separate set of encryption keys for each node along the circuit to ensure that no hop can trace these connections as they pass through.
Hidden services
Tor also makes it feasible for users to hide their location while offering various kind of services, such as web publishing and instant messaging server. There are number of “.onion” websites available. These services are used by activist to share confidential information with general public, some use it to share information without revealing their identity but some of those websites sites are facilitating black market. One can buy drugs, extreme form of pornography, illegal arms and ammunition with the click of a button. There are also content (Text and Multimedia) available that are more than enough to corrupt the moral of an individual toward the current form of society.
Why we need Tor
Tor serves our ever increasing need of privacy and security. It helps journalist to communicate with whistleblower, helps normal user from being tracked by websites and Internet service providers. Businesses uses Tor to research competition, Activists use Tor to anonymously report on corruption etc. Militaries use Tor to protect their communications and intelligence gathering online.
How Criminal Use Tor
Criminal uses it with very same ways but for malicious intent. They communicate with other criminals around the world without the fear of being tracked down by different Intelligence agencies. Criminals are daring to sell illegal product with the privilege of anonymity and has developed a large market place for doing things that one can’t even imagine. There are large number of “.onion” websites that are run by anonymous criminal to provide services that poses threat to normal people. One can buy or sell drugs, can hire even a hitman to kill a person and more.

How to access Tor
The simplest way to avail the services offered by Tor, is to download Tor bundle browser and you are ready to roll. There are other application like Orbot for android to access its services. For more information visit http://torproject.org.
To begin with a hidden website you can go to the following link:
http://kpvz7ki2v5agwt35.onion/wiki/index.php/Main_Page -> Hidden Wiki
So what I can infer from all this is that Technology like Tor can make it possible to raise users privacy and safety on the Internet while on the other side enable criminals to take this world down.

References:

https://www.torproject.org/about/overview.html.en

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_%28anonymity_network%29/

Pranay Singh