A team of South Korean researchers has taken the unprecedented step of developing and training artificial intelligence (AI) on the so-called “Dark Web.” The Dark Web trained AI, called DarkBERT, was unleashed to trawl and index what it could find to help shed light on ways to combat cybercrime. The “Dark Web” is a section of the internet that remains hidden and cannot be accessed through standard web browsers. This part of the web is notorious for its anonymous websites and marketplaces that facilitate illegal activities, such as drug and weapon trading, stolen data sales, and a haven for cybercriminals. The ‘Dark Web’ employs complex systems that mask the IP address of its users, making it difficult to trace the websites they have visited. Accessing this web section requires specialized software, the most popular of which is Tor (The Onion Router). Tor is used by approximately 2.5 million individuals every day. With the rise of natural language processing programs like ChatGPT, such technology is increasingly used as a new kind of cybercrime. By developing an AI that can fight fire with fire, the researchers wanted to discover how large language models (LLM) could help. To this end, the researchers have published a paper titled “DarkBERT: A Language Model for the Dark Side of the Internet” on their findings. They connected their model to the Tor network and collected raw data to create a database. However, the paper has yet to be peer-reviewed.

Full report : Meet ‘DarkBERT:’ South Korea’s Dark Web AI could combat cybercrime.