Academic Papers — Documented Harms

S. Aked. An investigation into darknets and the content available via anonymous peer-to-peer file sharing. 9th Australian Information Security Management Conference, Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia. December 2011
Adrian Crenshaw. Darknets and hidden servers: Identifying the true IP/network identity of I2P service hosts. Not an empirical study, stating only "There is a fair amount of child pornography out on I2P."

A. Biryukov, I. Pustogarov, F. Thill, and R. Weinmann. Content and Popularity Analysis of Tor Hidden Services. In Proc. IEEE Intl. Conference on Distributed Computing Systems Workshops (10.1109/ICDCSW.2014.20), pages 188–193, 2014.
M. Spitters, S. Verbruggen, and M. v. Staalduinen. Towards a Comprehensive Insight into the Thematic Organization of the Tor Hidden Services. In 2014 IEEE Joint Intelligence and Security Informatics Conference, pages 220–223, 2014.

G. H. Owenson and N. J. Savage. The Tor Dark Net. Technical report, Centre for International Governance Innovation, September 30 2015.

D. Moore and T. Rid. Cryptopolitik and the Darknet. Survival: Global Politics and Strategy. (10.1080/00396338.2016.1142085), 58(1):7–38, February 2016.
G. Owen and N. Savage. Empirical analysis of Tor Hidden Services. IET Information Security, 10(3):113–118, May 2016.

M. Bernaschi, A. Celestini, S. Guarino, and F. Lombardi. Exploring and Analyzing the Tor Hidden Services Graph. ACM Trans. Web, 11(4), July 2017. ISSN 1559-1131. doi: 10.1145/3008662.
B. N. Levine, M. Liberatore, B. Lynn, and M. Wright. Statistical Detection of Downloaders in Freenet. In Proc. IEEE Intl. Wkshp. on Privacy Engineering, pages 25–32, May 2017.

J. Dalins, C. Wilson, and M. Carman. Criminal motivation on the dark web: A categorisation model for law enforcement. Digital Investigation, 24:62–71, 2018.
G. Owenson, S. Cortes, and A. Lewman. The darknet’s smaller than we thought: The life cycle of Tor Hidden Services. Digital Investigation (10.1016/j.diin.2018.09.005), 27:17–22, 2018.
R. Portnoff. The Dark Net: De-Anonymization, Classification and Analysis. PhD thesis, Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California at Berkeley, March 2018.

S. He, Y. He, and M. Li. Classification of Illegal Activities on the Dark Web. In Proc. International Conference on Information Science and Systems (10.1145/3322645.3322691), pages 73–78, March 2019.
E. Bursztein, E. Clarke, M. DeLaune, D. M. Elifff, N. Hsu, L. Olson, J. Shehan, M. Thakur, K. Thomas, and T. Bright. Rethinking the Detection of Child Sexual Abuse Imagery on the Internet. In The World Wide Web Conference, pages 2601–2607, May 2019.

B. R. da Cunha, P. MacCarron, J. F. Passold, L. W. dos Santos, K. A. Oliveira, and J. P. Gleeson. Assessing police topological efficiency in a major sting operation on the dark web. Scientific Reports (10.1038/s41598-019-56704-4), 10(1):73, January 2020.
C. M. Steel, E. Newman, S. O’Rourke, and E. Quayle. An integrative review of historical technology and countermeasure usage trends in online child sexual exploitation material offenders. Forensic Science International: Digital Investigation, 33, June 2020.
B. N. Levine, M. Liberatore, B. Lynn, and M. Wright. A Forensically Sound Method of Identifying Downloaders and Uploaders in Freenet. In Proc. ACM Computer and Communications Security, November 2020. doi: 10.1145/3372297.3417876.
E. Jardine, A. M. Lindner, and G. Owenson, The potential harms of the Tor anonymity network cluster disproportionately in free countries, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 117 (50) 31716-31721, (2020).

Figueras-Martín, E., Magán-Carrión, R. & Boubeta-Puig, J. Drawing the web structure and content analysis beyond the Tor darknet: Freenet as a case of study. J. Inf. Secur. Appl. 68, 103229. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jisa.2022.103229 (2022).

Ball, M., Broadhurst, R. (2023). Hidden Platforms for Cybercrime: Experiences Investigating Darknet Services. In: Díaz-Fernández, A.M., Del-Real, C., Molnar, L. (eds) Fieldwork Experiences in Criminology and Security Studies. Springer, Cham.

Nurmi, J., Paju, A., Brumley, B. B., Insoll, T., Ovaska, A. K., Soloveva, V., Vaaranen-Valkonen, N., Aaltonen, M., & Arroyo, D. (2024). Investigating child sexual abuse material availability, searches, and users on the anonymous Tor network for a public health intervention strategy. Scientific Reports, 14(1), Article 7849.
P. Divakarmurthy, B. Requião da Cunha , J. F. Passold, M. Oliveira, R. Menezes Unravelling the dynamics of child sexual exploitation material circulation on the Dark Web. PLoS One. 2024 Jul 24;19(7):e0306516. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0306516. PMID: 39046976; PMCID: PMC11268584.