The Deep Web, the place where everything is possible! Thanks to Reddit, we collected up to 10 impossible, craziest and creepiest stories happened all over the world.
1. No Love Deep Web Alternate Reality Game
I was a part of the No Love Deep Web Alternate Reality Game where we had to do a deepnet scavenger hunt which culminated in me driving to New York to answer a pay phone at 3:00AM. That was cool.
2. Mind the gap
I once found a forum dedicated to sharing recordings of the automated messages that tell you the next stop on trains. People would post the recordings that they presumably made themselves and then they would discuss them.
It haunts me to this day. I have so many questions.
3. We see you
This was back before Google. Web pages were, for the most part, still very basic HTML with Javascript. Hardly anyone used CSS. Only discussion boards and some banking sites had anything approaching mature front-end/back-end combinations. Etc. Early ‘Net. Real “deep web” story, not just one about illicit activities on-line.
I was browsing random blogs, Geocities sites, and the like, just going from link to link. Eventually I came upon an odd page – it appeared to be random thoughts from different people, but for the time, it was very well-designed. The messages seemed to be cryptic in nature, like several people trying to pass secret notes. I started through the source, and hidden in the comments of a javascript were various IP addresses.
I gathered all of the IP’s in a text file and began enumerating. Some were routers with banner messages I could telnet to – almost all at universities (“Warning! This is a secure system at University of Bla Bla….”). The default Cisco credentials from back in the day worked on most of them, but I didn’t poke around. A few of the IP’s were web servers with little to nothing on them, mostly Apache on Linux or some BSD, at least one IIS server I can recall.
I finally came upon a web server with a huge directory of HTML files and TIFF images, with a few smaller sub directories containing the same. nslookup returned no reverse records for the IP. A VisualRoute traced it as far as Colorado. The HTML files appeared to be records a psychologist or similar mental health professional would keep. The images were of faxes, apparently of both military and medical nature.
As I browsed from a sub directory back to the parent, at the top of was a new HTML file named something like “1-.HELLO-THERE.html”. The time stamp was from right that minute. I opened it, and in plain text was the message “we see you”. No quotes, all lower-case. About 15 seconds later the server dropped.
4. I know you
I posted a comment on a video, and when I went back to that page to watch the video later, someone replied to my comment saying: “That is very astute of you Mr. (insert my last name)”
I didn’t internet for like a week. my last name is not a common one.
5. DIY stuff
DIY vasectomy kit on SR. it was a kit of weird dentist tool looking hooks and some tube thing. $20.
6. Crazy stuff
A few years ago I went searching for rhino horn for a story, one guy said he had a couple of whole horns he’d sell for six figures. I had to pass.
7. Mind-blowing Experience
Silk Road. Circa 2013. Purchased what was promised as a “mind-blowing” experience. Received a Dust Buster two days later. Strangely, no complaints on my end.
8. Nice guy
Back when IRC was on its way out and P2P was in its infancy I tried to download the sims via a private FTP. The guy I downloaded from found a Trojan on my computer and walked me through how to remove it. I would take a bullet for that dude.
9. Finally some food #1
Found a guy selling carrots. Like, it wasn’t code for anything, he was literally just selling carrots for bitcoin. 10/10 would visit again.
10. Finally some food #2
There was a german man selling pretzels, just pretzels.
