The dark web just got a little less dark with the launch of a new search engine that lets you easily find illicit drugs and other contraband online.
Grams, which launched last week and is patterned after Google, is accessible only through the Tor anonymising browser (the address for Grams is: grams7enufi7jmdl.onion) but fills a niche for anyone seeking quick access to sites selling drugs, guns, stolen credit card numbers, counterfeit cash and fake IDs -- sites that previously only could be found by users who knew the exact URL for the site.
"I noticed on the forums and reddit people were constantly asking 'where to get product X?' and 'which market had product X?' or 'who had the best product X and was reliable and not a scam?'" Grams' creator told WIRED in a chat session. "I wanted to make it easy for people to find things they wanted on the darknet and figure out who was a trustworthy vendor."
He wouldn't provide his real name and asked instead to be referred to by the pseudonym he uses on Reddit, "gramsadmin."
Although Grams is still in beta, it's already serving up results from eight online markets, thanks to an API the developer made available to site owners to allow his engine to scrape their product listings.
DON'T MISS
$25 million in Silk Road Bitcoin to be auctioned off$25 million in Silk Road Bitcoin to be auctioned off
These include SilkRoad2, which popped up in the wake of the original Silk Road's demise following the arrest of its alleged founder Ross Ulbricht and the seizure of that site by the feds.
Other sites included in the search listings so far include Agora, BlackBank, Cloud-Nine, Evolution, NiceGuy, Pandora, and The Pirate Market.
The search engine results include the vendor's name and location and the price of the product.
The engine also includes a number of Google-like features including an "I Feel Lucky" search button (our test of it produced listings for high-quality crystal meth) and other features that allow users to filter out results for sites they don't want to see and sort items for price and the most recent listings.
There are even plans for advertising a la Google adwords, according to the developer of Grams, who has been posting announcements about his progress on Reddit.
The search results provide a similar level of rich content including the price of drugs
"I am working on the algorithm so it is a lot like Google's it will have a scoring system based how long the listing has been up, how many transactions, how many good reviews. That way you will see the best listing first," he wrote in one of his posts.
"Within the next two weeks Grams will have a system similar to Google AdWords where vendors can buy keywords and their listings will go to the top of the search results when those keywords are searched for," he wrote in another post. "They will be bordered with an advertisement disclaimer so users know those are paid results."
One more advantage that Grams provides? It helps users locate sites that have gone down -- due to a DDoS attack or other event -- and relaunched under new URLs.
Gramsadmin says he coded the engine on his own, working 14-hour days for the last two weeks, and would love help, though he suspects this will be difficult.
"I have many ideas and features I am trying to implement," he told Wired. "I would love to hire programmers, but it is very hard to hire a good programmer you can trust and still remain anonymous."
Among the features to be added are profile pages for vendors, to include contact info for the vendor in case a market goes down, and customer reviews of the vendors across multiple markets where they peddle their wares.
"I don't have the capabilities yet to spider all of the darknet, so for now [I'm] working on making an automated site submitter for people to submit their sites and get listed in our search engine," he said. "I will also be making it easier for advertisers to buy ads through an automated system."
The dark web community has been so appreciative of his project, they have already sent out their version of a welcome wagon.
"Grams did get hit by a DDoS attack after the launch of the beta version," he said. "It took us down for a few hours. [But] every major darknet site gets DDoS'd though so I took it as a 'Welcome to the neighborhood' message."
Honestly, this "dark web" is very disturbing. The real world is enough dark and depressing as it is. Now, let's make the same with internet.
