South Korean police said that there are more than 760,000 dark web site addresses and will join forces with the FBI to crack down

South Korean police have listed dark web tracking, virtual asset analysis, and DDoS attacks as "three core tasks for investigating network terrorism" that the police must urgently solve.

Virtual assets are becoming increasingly popular, so the dark web has become an anonymous means of payment for crimes.

For this reason, the Korean National Police Agency said that it has decided to set up a working group to deal with network crime platforms. Three sub-departments will carry out three main tasks and have decided to establish and operate the TF Network Crime Platform Response Special Task Force to develop strategies and technical means to rectify the dark web, analyze virtual currencies, and DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attacks.

This team will focus on researching response technologies and investigating network terrorism tracking technologies. The TF consists of "three parts" as follows:

• Dark web tracking
• Encrypted currency analysis
• DDoS attack monitoring

It will be used to research response technologies and investigative technologies to track the core of network terrorist attacks.

The South Korean police explained that this technology poses a major threat to future security as an anonymous network and means of payment, because it is abused for network terrorist crimes and general criminal activities of network criminals.

According to the South Korean police, the number of dark web site addresses has increased from 92,400 in 2018 to 760,000 last year. The dark web hides user IP addresses and is often used for drug trafficking and child sexual exploitation. The police said that tracking the above network crimes requires a very high level of professional knowledge and technology.

The dark web is an online space that can only be accessed by installing specific programs as an anonymous network service. It has the characteristics of not exposing server IP addresses and visitors. For this reason, the number of global users continues to increase due to the spread of malicious programs such as ransomware, drug trafficking, child sexual exploitation, and illegal filming.

Virtual assets have become an important currency for anonymous payments on the dark web. They are abused to buy and sell various illegal vehicles or to collect proceeds from crimes such as ransomware. DDoS attacks disrupt websites and network services by sending a large amount of data to multiple systems at the same time.

According to Yonhap News Agency, the working group consists of 1 investigating officer with expertise in IT and several police officers. The investigating officer selects outstanding police officers who used to work in private network security companies from the students of the concentrated education course in information technology jointly organized by the Science, Technology, Information and Communication Department and the Korea Information Technology Research Institute.

The working group will establish cooperative relationships with domestic and foreign law enforcement agencies and network security research institutions such as the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Korea Internet Corporation for Advancement.