The dark web does not have a “monopoly” on online threats-but this role has been exaggerated in part by iceberg-like depictions of vast scary blobs lurking beneath the surface. Online risks never occur in silos as the iceberg might suggest, and investigations that begin on the surface web often cross over to the deep and dark web, and vice versa. Many threat actors on the dark web have digital footprints that overlap deep and surface web spaces. Nefarious online activity happens on the surface and deep web as much as the dark web. In reality, they are not distinctly separated but highly interwoven, with deep and dark web pages “hiding in plain sight” amongst the navigable surface web.īeyond how the web is actually structured, the iceberg also fails to capture how users navigate the internet, especially from a threat intelligence perspective. It’s easy to think of the surface, deep, and dark web operating in compartmentalized “layers” of digital space. Where does the internet iceberg fall short, and what model is better suited to threat intelligence practices and solutions? Where the Internet Iceberg Analogy Gets It Wrong However, the iceberg is no longer an accurate representation of how web spaces interact-yet it impacts how security professionals view the internet and consequently, how they approach digital risk protection strategies and tools. This image makes it easy to understand where content is accessible (or not) online, and represents how more anonymized and hidden parts of the web are valuable for investigating illicit activity and digital risk indicators like leaked data.
INTERNET ICEBERG EXPLAINED SOFTWARE
The dark web is usually depicted as the deepest, darkest part of the iceberg, including unindexed web pages only accessible through specialized software like Tor. This includes the surface web-the smaller, visible part of the iceberg easily navigable through standard search engines like Google-and the deep web, the largest part of the iceberg including unindexed or encrypted pages. The internet iceberg is often used to illustrate how web spaces are structured. But could this model now be irrelevant-or even detrimental-for effective digital risk protection?Īn array of iceberg images discovered through a Google image search for “deep dark web” Like many analogies, its goal is to make a complex system (like the internet) more digestible. It’s a metaphor the threat intelligence and corporate security world has long been familiar with: the internet iceberg.
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