The Operation Grayskull investigation launched in 2020, when law enforcement agents noticed a spike in traffic to a dark web site suspected of hosting child abuse material. The dark web child abuse sites eventually attracted more than 120,000 members, millions of files and at least 100,000 visits in a single day, according to an FBI official who spoke with CBS News. It’s a place where you’ll find data leaks and illegal trades, but also legitimate, legal online activities users want to carry out without attracting the attention of law enforcement agencies or governments. It’s a part of the internet that’s less regulated and more shadowy, for better and for worse.
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However, massive inconsistencies across tech companies and platforms in addressing the material leave gaping holes that pedophiles and criminals, like traffickers, easily exploit. According to the snapshot study, there has been 17 percent increase in online AI-altered CSAM since the fall of 2023, as well as a startling increase in materials showing extreme and explicit sex acts. Materials include adult pornography altered to show a child’s face, as well as existing child sexual abuse content digitally edited with another child’s likeness on top.
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If you want to be untraceable and undetectable, connecting to the dark web via the Tor browser is a major step towards that, but not the only step you’ll need. Below is a chart showing the breakdown of the sexual activity seen in this 3–6-year-old ‘self-generated’ material. IntelliGrade, our bespoke grading software, allows us to add additional contextual metadata as we grade and hash the material. These extra tags describe the sexual activity seen and enable our assessments to be compatible with multiple legal jurisdictions around the world. U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu notes that the website featured more than 250,000 videos of prepubescent teens and carried a warning on its landing page that instructed users specifically not to upload adult porn. Federal prosecutors say the website, Welcome To Video, was run by 23-year-old Jong Woo Son on the “darknet,” a section of the internet known for its more complicated infrastructure, user anonymity and lack of easy access.
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The law enforcement officials also pointed to problems with Microsoft’s Bing search engine, and Snap, the parent company of the social network Snapchat. In a 2016 Wisconsin case, Tumblr alerted a person who had uploaded explicit images that the account had been referred to the authorities, a practice that a former employee told The Times had been common for years. The tip allowed the man to destroy evidence on his electronic devices, the police said. The offender in Ohio, a site administrator named Jason Gmoser, “went to great lengths to hide” his conduct, according to the documents. Testimony in his criminal case revealed that it would have taken the authorities “trillions of years” to crack the 41-character password he had used to encrypt the site. He eventually turned it over to investigators, and was sentenced to life in prison in 2016.
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Rosenstein possessed such a large quantity of abusive images, he needed to store some on a server he used to run his business, according to the Justice Department. Their search warrant was so important to the bureau that it was approved by the FBI director himself. When the agents breached Spearman’s door with tactical explosives, Spearman fought back, tussling with the agents as three of his handguns remained barely out of reach.
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About 23 children have been rescued from active abuse situations, the joint task force said at a press conference about the operation. In the UK, seven men have already been convicted in connection with the investigation, including Kyle Fox who was jailed for 22 years last March for the rape of a five-year-old boy and who appeared on the site sexually abusing a three-year-old girl. They argued in a court filing that Garrell possessed a predator’s “handbook,” with “detailed instructions” for grooming children for future abuse.
“Garrell engaged in an extremely complex and technologically sophisticated conspiracy that far exceeds the typical child-exploitation offenses,” prosecutors said. The dark web, which is what I’m discussing here, is a small subset of the deep web, and refers to websites that are specifically trying to stay out of sight. These pages come with extra protections for user anonymity and data security, and you need special software to access them—you can’t get at them through your normal web browser, like you can with much of the rest of the deep web. Category C was the grade given to the majority of the images with a slightly higher proportion of Category B among the multiple child images which also reflects the full data for the year.
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Investigators said some of the videos and images in Kilgore’s library depicted children as young as infants and toddlers being sexually abused. During an interview with law enforcement, Kilgore admitted to accessing the dark web to download child pornography and using a peer-to-peer network to transfer child pornography to others. The laws will also make it illegal for anyone to possess so-called “paedophile manuals” which teach people how to use AI to sexually abuse children. According to court documents and evidence presented at the sentencing hearing, in February 2023, law enforcement determined that Kilgore was using the dark web to share over 150 videos and images depicting the sexual abuse of children. On Feb. 23, 2023, investigators said they executed a search warrant at Kilgore’s apartment, seizing a homemade laptop that contained 11 integrated hard drives. Last year, tech companies reported over 45 million online photos and videos of children being sexually abused — more than double what they found the previous year.
The Internet Watch Foundation’s powerful new tool for small businesses and startups. Designed to detect and stop known illegal imagery using advanced hash-matching technology, Image Intercept helps eligible companies meet online safety obligations and keep users safe. In a review of 12,000 new AI-generated images posted to a dark web forum over a one month period, 90 percent were realistic enough to be assessed under existing laws for real CSAM, according to IWF analysts.
The FBI managed to handcuff and arrest Spearman, a high-value arrest, in what a top Justice Department official called “one of the most successful” prosecutions of its kind. As I’ve previously said, it’s a good idea to keep your interactions with the dark web to a minimum, unless you can absolutely trust the people you’re dealing with. You’ll often see a sign in stores that says “look, don’t touch,” and it’s not a bad adage to bear in mind as you navigate around the dark web. Individual sites on the dark web look much like they do on the regular web, though a lot of them are a bit more rough around the edges. (Presentation and polish isn’t quite so important on this part of the internet.) Click on any website link, and it’ll appear on screen, with its address at the top.
He went on to present a map of the United States covered with red dots, each representing a computer used to share images of child sex abuse. “We are overwhelmed, we are underfunded and we are drowning in the tidal wave of tragedy,” he said. Most tech companies have been quick to respond to urgent inquiries, but responses in other cases vary significantly. In interviews, law enforcement officials pointed to Tumblr, a blogging and social networking site with 470 million users, as one of the most problematic companies.
- The dark web, also known as “darknet,” refers to encrypted online content that is not indexed by conventional search engines.
- An investigation by The New York Times found an insatiable criminal underworld that had exploited the flawed and insufficient efforts to contain it.
- Following the take-down of the site in March 2018, authorities concentrated on uncovering the identities of site users.
- Many AI products and tools have been developed for entirely genuine, honest and non-harmful reasons, but they can easily be adapted and used by offenders looking to create harmful or illegal material.
- The dark web is used by journalists, whistleblowers, and political activists who need the protections that it offers.
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Prosecutors said the platform “was not simply a website; it was a large, active community of pedophiles and (abuse material) enthusiasts. And it existed in part because of the Defendant’s criminal acts.” “The devices at his desk contained massive quantities of evidence proving that he was the lead administrator of Website A,” the memo said. “Unsurprisingly, the defendant’s devices also contained an enormous collection of images and videos depicting the rape and abuse of children.” Of the 2,401 ‘self-generated’ images and videos of 3–6-year-olds that we hashed this year, 91% were of girls and most (62%) were assessed as Category C by our analysts. These images showed children in sexual poses, displaying their genitals to the camera.
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Operation Stream, as it was dubbed, was supported by law enforcement in more than 35 countries, including the United States. Unlike physical abuse which leaves visible scars, the digital nature of child sexual abuse material means victims are constantly re-traumatised every time their content is seen. Unlike other websites hosting images of child sex abuse, ‘Kidflix’ allowed users to stream videos as well as download files. It is perhaps surprising that there is not a higher ratio of multiple child images in the ‘self-generated’ 3-6 age group. It would be easy to assume that a child of that age would only engage in this type of activity on camera with the encouragement in person of an older child, leading the way, but shockingly this is not what we have seen. It also goes to show how successful the abusers are at manipulating very young children into sexual behaviour that the child is unlikely to have previously been aware of.
Bake admitted facilitating child sexual abuse, making and distributing abuse images, possessing extreme pornography and a paedophile manual, and admitting being a member of an organised crime group. Bake was second in command of the site, which had hundreds of links to child sexual abuse images, including some involving babies and toddlers. Horrifyingly, forum members referred to those creating the AI-imagery as “artists”. This technology is creating a new world of opportunity for offenders to create and share the most depraved forms of child abuse content. Researchers analysed chats that took place in dark web forums over the previous 12 months. We found evidence of growing interest in this technology, and of online offenders’ desire for others to learn more and create abuse images.
