systematically investigate marketplaces, forums, and threat actors operating across the dark web, understanding who they are, how they operate, and how to collect against them.
Gain hands-on capability across I2P, Lokinet, Freenet, and Tails, ensuring you can follow targets wherever they operate.
Develop scraping techniques, monitoring systems, and communication channel analysis methods that support long-term, complex investigations in hostile environments.
This course develops specialist capability for practitioners conducting complex investigations in dark web environments. Building on foundational Tor access skills, you will learn to search using dark web search engines, investigate different actor types, monitor communication channels including Telegram and paste sites, and operate across multiple darknets.
This course takes approximately 5 to 6 hours to complete. The course is entirely self-paced, allowing you to work through the material at a time and speed that suits your operational schedule.
This course is designed for investigators, intelligence analysts, law enforcement personnel, cybersecurity professionals, and OSINT practitioners who need to conduct sustained or complex investigations in dark web environments. It is suited for those who have foundational Tor access capability and now need to search hostile environments, investigate actors, or operate across multiple darknets.
Dark Web Essentials or equivalent foundational capability. You should be comfortable downloading and configuring Tor browser, navigating to .onion sites using directories and known URLs, and applying basic operational security measures before starting this course.
Consider the Dark Web Bundle (a beginner to advanced learning path including this course) if you don't meet the prerequisites.
Person of Interest & Social Media Investigations extends your capability to investigate individuals across social media platforms. Dark web actors often leave traces on the surface web — this course teaches systematic approaches to link selectors, correlate identities, and build comprehensive profiles across platforms.
Digital Footprint Assessment provides deeper grounding in operational security and attribution management. As your dark web work becomes more sustained and complex, understanding how to assess and mitigate attribution risk becomes essential to protecting your investigations and your organisation.
Welcome to the Illuminating the Dark Web Course
Before We Begin
Dark Web Bookmarks
Dark Web Search Engines
Dark Web Forums
Actors on the Dark Web: General
Actors on the Dark Web: Cyber
Actors on the Dark Web: Drugs and Firearms
Monitoring the Dark Web
PGP and Secure Email Services
Telegram
Paste Sites
Onion Share
Dark Web Scraping
