Often, during the information gathering phase, you may want to access potentially confidential information about the client that has been compromised by other parties. This search for potentially compromised information often has to be done on what is known as the Dark Web or Dark Net. This is an area of the Internet that is not indexed by search engines such as Google or Bing. The Dark Web is one of the areas where professional hackers trade information about exploits and malware and trade in stolen information. Often, this information can be credentials to your client or employer's systems.

The Dark Web does not have the same infrastructure as the indexed Internet. For example, there is no DNS structure, so Dark Web sites have to be navigated to using their URL. Even the URLs are different, as each site's URL is usually a string of random characters followed by the top level domain .onion. In addition, each site generally requires a username and password to...