How the US Military will fight ISIS on the Dark Web

The Dark Web is not so much a place as it is a method of achieving a level of anonymity online. It refers to web sites that mask the IP addresses of the servers on which they reside, making it impossible to know who or what is behind the site or sites. They don’t show up on search engines like Google so, unless you know exactly how to reach them, they’re effectively invisible. 
Activists and dissidents in countries like China and Iran use the Dark Web to get around state surveillance; journalists use it to reach sources and whistleblowers rely on it to spread the word about institutional abuse or malpractices. New evidence suggests that the Islamic State, or ISIS, or at least ISIS supporting groups, are seeking the Dark Web’s anonymity for operations beyond simple propaganda. Thus yet another challenge for law enforcement and the military: to track users on the Dark Web in a way that’s effective against ISIS but that doesn’t violate privacy.
First, while the Dark Web is incredibly valuable as a tool for dissident action, it also has some real dark spots. Ido Wulkan, the senior analyst at S2T, a Singapore-based technology company that develops Dark Web harvesting technologies, recently revealed to Israeli newspaper Haaretz that his company has found a number of websites raising funds for ISIS through bitcoin donations.
Some Dark Web content is accessible only via special software like Tor, a package that encrypts a user’s IP address and routes Internet traffic through a series of volunteer servers around the world (so-called onion routing.) Like the Internet itself, Tor was a product of the military, originally designed by the Office of Naval Research to give sailors a secure means of communication.
Today, an explosion of Tor usage in a specific place or among a certain group is one indicator of increased secret communication activity. That could mean different things in different places. In June 2014, when the government of Iraq blocked Twitter and Facebook as part of its response to the growing ISIS situation, Tor usage in that country exploded, according to Tor metrics data. Usage has since calmed down in Iraq significantly.
Recently, the Chertoff Group put out a new paper detailing some of the methodologies that they advise law enforcement to use to monitor Tor users and sites. Since it was co-written by former DHS director and Jeb Bush national security team member Michael Chertoff, it’s safe to say it provides a good indication of current law enforcement thinking. The name of the paper is the Impact of the Dark Web on Internet Governance and Cyber Security, co-written with Toby Smith.
Mapping the hidden service directory presents a technical challenge that’s a bit more unique. Tor uses a domain database built on what’s called a distributed hash table. If Tor were a city, the distributed hash table, DHT, would be the architectural plans for the structures in it. Each node in a DHT can store information that, in turn, is retrievable if the user knows the exact address of that node. Mapping the DHT can reveal how those nodes relate to one another, providing a sense of shape for the broader network. 
Recently disclosed court documents show that the FBI has used some code from a software product called the Metasploit Decloaking Engine for Dark Web investigations. 
As the Dark Web evolves, people will begin to organize within it in order to make it more useful. That’s inevitable. As any organism grows it becomes complex; and as it becomes complex it seeks organization as a means to grow efficiently and minimize cost. It is in that organization that the hidden Web is revealing itself both to individuals who would seek to give funds to groups like ISIS and to spies who would seek out those people.
http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2015/02/how-military-will-fight-isis-dark-web/105948/?oref=defenseone_today_nl