Snook - Horrors of the Dark Web

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

The dark web harbors some of the most horrifying content of the modern age. Today, we are diving into a horrific website that takes advantage of some of the most innocent people in the world, to an in...sane website that almost reset society to the stone age. These are the Horrors of the Dark Web.WARNING: This video contains descriptions and references to extremely disturbing content found on the dark web. Join the Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/SnookYTFollow me on instagram and Spotify!Would you like to see another part in this series? Let me know down below. Thanks for watching and supporting the channel.Subscribe and like for more, thank you for watching, and stay safe...And yes, I'm a human voice.NEXT SUB GOAL - 1,000,000 SUBSCRIBERS! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 We've all heard of the dark web, a hidden corner of the internet so secret it feels like a myth, a place where crime runs unchecked, predators thrive without fear, and nothing is ever as it seems. But what if I told you? It's completely real and far more terrifying than you could imagine. Today, we're venturing into those shadows, from hackers capable of bringing nations to their knees to viruses that freeze hospitals and paralyzed governments to communities of criminals praying on the innocent. Make sure to like the video and subscribe to the channel. And now, without further ado, let's dive into the horrors of the Dark Web. Boys Town.
Starting point is 00:00:48 We've covered a lot of stories on this channel about different dark web websites that host illegal content involving minors. On one hand, telling these stories is important. With crimes like these, it's important that disgusting criminals who direct their sick desires on children aren't allowed to hide in the dark. They need to be exposed and their crimes talked about to ensure that future generations are protected. And on the other hand, none of these stories I've covered are as casually despicable, disheartening, and downright horrifying as the one I'm about to cover now. So if this kind of content is too much for you,
Starting point is 00:01:29 please feel free to skip ahead to the next topic. Because we're about a cover Boys Town. June 2019, a German website launches on the Tor browser, registered in Moldova. It's built like a video sharing platform, but with multiple different forums. Over the next year, it amassed a following of dedicated users, all of them sharing illegal content involving children. The site encourages original uploads, a mix of never-before-seeing content and videos that had been circulating for years. In order to get access to the site, you had to become a member. The details of this part are obscure,
Starting point is 00:02:10 but it involves paying a fee in some regard, and a thorough vetting process. Oftentimes, people would meet on the surface web. We've talked about it before, secret illegal content involving minors circulating around the internet. Maybe it's an Instagram page dedicated to Barbies with odd captions and cryptic messaging.
Starting point is 00:02:31 Maybe it's a video of a middle school swim club posted by mother with a comment that reads telegram. Disgusting stuff. Regardless, people meet communities on the surface web and are introduced to the dark web once they're trusted. This is when they're introduced to Boys Town. Boys Town is a community center living beneath the surface web, hiding in the shadows of the Tor browser. In this community, like-minded people can share their like-minded interests. It had two chat rooms, L-O-L-L-I pub and Boys Pub. And I know I didn't have to spell it the first one, but for guideline reasons I had to.
Starting point is 00:03:15 And they share images, talk about their favorite boys, explore each other's perversions, and when all is said and done, they comfort each other, encourage each other to continue indulging in their disgusting fantasies and continue consuming. I like this quote by Dr. Nancy Falkner, CEO of Safeguard Our Children, United Mothers. Quote, computer technology and the internet enables people who commit crimes against children to locate and interact with other deviant criminals more readily than ever before. The long-term organizational aspects are terrifying.
Starting point is 00:03:55 The common gathering place and the result in support, they are providing each other is probably their most significant advantage and the most troublesome for a concerned public. The computer, a common household fixture, is now a place where disturbed, perverted criminals can go to hear others say, you're okay and what you're doing is okay. Don't listen to the rest of the world. Just listen to us. As the site survived for a year, then two, then three, it began to evolve from a community forum and the video sharing aspect became more thorough and insidious. And just like Dr. Faulkner said, they began to organize. Site administrators created categories, art, kindergarten, toddler, spy cam, and there's more,
Starting point is 00:04:49 but just honestly too disgusting to even mention. These categories were all dedicated to the exploitation of boys below the age of adolescence. And this is beyond horrible in and of itself. It's disgusting, unbelievably disturbing, and cruel, but it didn't just stop at categories. Criminals needed to fill these categories with videos. And how do they do that? Well, they created their own videos. This wasn't like other dark web websites we've talked about before.
Starting point is 00:05:23 This was a community of people producing and distributing illegal content involving minors. Some of it was recycled content, but most of it wasn't. I mean, it's already horrifying enough that people watch these videos, but they're producing it and then sharing it. It just takes it to another level. And they were scouting on the surface web, day and night, looking for others just like them. and looking for minors to commit crimes against. The site administrators in communication with their many users recommended ways to avoid law enforcement
Starting point is 00:06:03 and continue consuming illegal content without getting caught. Never use your real name. Always use a VPN. Keep everything password protected. Only communicate with other criminals, with just a few of the rules that they stuck by. As of May 2021, two years after launching, Boys Town was considered one of the largest online platforms for the distribution of illegal content involving minors, with 400,000 registered users. And just for reference, that's only a little less than the population of Tampa, Florida.
Starting point is 00:06:41 In underground, dark web city of people who prey on the week, sharing thousands upon thousands of videos. and unlike any other dark net site we've talked about, all of these people were in tight, coordinated communication. Quote, age is not the consideration, but the maturity level is. I've met some 14-year-olds that were more mature than some people in their 20s. Everyone is different, and some people are ready sooner. Which is just disgusting. Even though Boys Town had gone to extreme lengths to hide their community from authorities,
Starting point is 00:07:19 they still garnered unwanted attention. And before long, they caught the eye of the German police. German operatives, in coordination with Interpol, infiltrated the site, pretending to be one of their community members, which I imagine was both terrible and exhausting. They cataloged the big contributors, who was providing the most photos, who was the most active in the community,
Starting point is 00:07:43 and who was organizing their massive following. With this information, they began to suss out the administration. The people responsible for creating the insidious Boys Town. But for some unknown reason, the site was more difficult to crack down on than other similar sites on tour. The Boys Town defenses were strong. Their cyber footprint was almost completely clean, and the security was very, very well developed. Someone had spent a lot of time ensuring that the users of Boys Towns, and its administrators would never be caught.
Starting point is 00:08:24 But the investigators were clever. You see, most people think Tor is completely anonymous. Anyone or anything you put on the Tor browser will be hidden, and you, in turn, will be untraceable. And the first part of that is true. Things will be hidden on tour, but what is hidden can ultimately be found. It isn't easy tracking someone down on tour,
Starting point is 00:08:48 but it can be done. And here's how the German police did it. Basically, Tor has a series of checkpoints for sending encrypted data. These are called nodes. When you send or receive messages, a particular series of nodes will activate. Think of it like ripples on a pond. Well, German police would send a message of a certain size. It would create ripples on certain nodes,
Starting point is 00:09:13 and they'd crack each one for a ripple of that same size. The nodes that received their characteristic ripple acted like breadcrumbs to what's known as an entry node. In other words, once they found the entry node, they found their suspects. And by the end of the investigation, they had information on four administrators they wanted to prosecute. Now, we don't know their real names. German privacy laws and modern investigations prevent law enforcement from sharing their names, but we do have their descriptions. A 40-year-old man from Paterborn, a 49-year-old man from Munich, a 58-year-old man from North Germany, then living in Paraguay.
Starting point is 00:09:57 These were the administrators, the organizers of the insidious Boys Town, and a fourth suspect, a 64-year-old man from Hamburg, who was one of the largest contributors of illegal content on the site, uploading over. 3,500 videos. And that to me is just beyond ridiculous. That is so many videos. In April of 2021, the site was seized by Interpol and all of these suspects were arrested. The man living in Paraguay was later extradited by Germany for trial. And normally, that would have been the end of it. These disgusting men see prison time. The side of shut down and that's that. But immediately, things were different about Boys Town. And by the way, most of the stuff I'm about to cover isn't widely talked about and there isn't much detail. But I think these next few details are of the utmost importance when it comes to discussing the
Starting point is 00:11:05 terrifying ordeal that was Boys Town. Firstly, the press and the public were excluded from the trial. This isn't particularly unusual for German cases like this. They often exclude the public in order to prevent retramatization of victims, and in the case of highly disturbing material, will refuse to let details circulate, which on the surface isn't a bad take. I can see wanting to protect victims. I'm all for it. But this wasn't consistent with similar cases. Now, we don't know exactly what was on this website. And frankly, I don't want to to know. But just for reference, the trial of another huge illegal child content distributor, the Elysium Dark Web website, was also held in Germany. And that trial was open to the public.
Starting point is 00:11:55 Just to give you a rundown of Elysium really quickly, Elysium had 87,000 active users and had thousands of similar videos. In that way, the two websites were very similar. So why was Boys Town privatized while Elysium wasn't. Well, there's two options here. Option number one, whatever was happening on the Boys Town website was much, much worse than we could possibly imagine. I won't even speculate on what that could be, but to warrant a public exclusion, it would have to be very, very bad.
Starting point is 00:12:32 But more detail surfaced that made their exclusion seem a bit more intentional and a lot more suspicious. You see, the suspected administrators and content creator of Boys Town were interrogated and what information they did give was incredibly damning. You see, they claimed that one of the members of their inner circle responsible for managing the website was a high-ranking employee in a German security agency. Allegedly, this man on behalf of the German government was responsible for regularly, quote, checking the security of certain processes. Whatever that means. I have no idea.
Starting point is 00:13:13 But allegedly, he was a useful government agent. And remember how I said Boys Town was very difficult to crack? It had very, very good security. Well, according to the arrested suspects, this man was also responsible for creating Boys Town security and optimizing their programming scripts. So option two, and this is just an allegation, proposed by the four men on trial, so take it with a grain of salt. There was someone in the German government who helped create Boys Town, a high-ranking government official, and trying to avoid scandal, they privatize the trials. No jury of peers, nothing.
Starting point is 00:13:58 Whether that's true or not, we won't know anytime soon, but the implication is tremendous. and it might explain why the government didn't want the public present at the trial. It might be the case that there was a complete government cover-up in defense of a sickeny man who worked for their own government. Again, this is just an option and based on supposed information, but I still think it's valuable to talk about. Even if it's a possibility, I'd rather discuss it, because if it is true, that's just...
Starting point is 00:14:34 despicable. After the completely inaccessible trial had finished, the four men were served sentences of 12 years, 10 and a half years, 8 years, and 7 years in prison. And once again, as I seem to say every single time I cover this sort of topic, this is not enough time spent rotting in jail. 12 years, 10 years, 8 years and 7 years? That's ridiculous. These people should never, ever be free under any circumstances. It never ceases to amaze me how there are people who have committed tax evasion that are serving more time than actual goddamn monsters who consistently and continuously commit crimes against children.
Starting point is 00:15:22 Once again, I am left stunned, angry and disappointed in our global governments for not protecting the most innocent defenseless demographic on earth. it disgusts me to no end. And we're still not done. You see, I said when we started this story that Boys Town was different and I wasn't lying. After the government was shut down, government agencies expected it to die soundly. But unfortunately, they were dead wrong. Just hours after the Boys Town shut down, an unknown user posted a dump of Boys Town online.
Starting point is 00:16:01 back on the dark web for anyone to access. And now what does that mean? Well, it means that not only was Boys Town not dead, someone had secured the entire site. All of its data, all of its user information, and stored it just in case of a shutdown.
Starting point is 00:16:22 And what's worse, the actual German government had no intention of wiping any of that information. None of the videos, none of the chat logs. They weren't interested in protecting these children or their identities or even stopping the consumption. They were only interested in getting the arrests, which again the public was excluded from and moving on. It was actually a small group of journalists working for the popular German media company Funk,
Starting point is 00:16:52 who went in guerrilla style and wiped 13.5 terabytes of data across various file hosting sites. They actually have a YouTube channel called STRG underscore F, which, given their heroic choice to help remove this system content from the internet, I think it deserves a shout out. And just to give you a reference, 13.5 terabytes of information is about 1,500 hours worth of YouTube videos on average. You could watch my channel 10 times over, every single video on my channel 10 times over, and that's almost the amount of data they deleted. The funk journalists commented on the malpractice of their government, stating that the German police were, quote, only interested in hard drives of perpetrators, but not removing offending material from the internet.
Starting point is 00:17:42 And you'd think Boys Town would lay down and finally die already. But unfortunately, it proved to be something of a hydra. When you cut off one head, two more take its place. We know that three successor websites were shut down on Christmas of 2020. and all of them had the same admin, a remaining member of the inner circle of Boys Town. Another three administrators were arrested the same year and the German police secured,
Starting point is 00:18:09 according to their statements, hundreds of thousands of images. I think this problem stems from what Boys Town represented. It's sick, twisted, disgusting mission statement. This wasn't your typical website for illegal content involving minors. It was a dedicated case, community of despicable people, treating their crimes in offenses like unwanted taboos rather than the malignant cancer they are in our society. But community creates longevity.
Starting point is 00:18:43 We saw this when I covered Nambla a couple of months back. When these people get together and start discussing how they aren't monsters, we see these crimes not only escalate but permeate. they linger in the shadowy cracks beneath genuine websites hunting children and acting like it's normal and when they retreat to the dark web it just gets worse and worse they're like roaches
Starting point is 00:19:10 and that's why I think it's so important to cover these type of topics it's incredibly difficult to talk about these stories it genuinely breaks my heart and it's more than just disturbing but in my opinion it's our job to talk about these issues. Secrets keep them safe.
Starting point is 00:19:29 A lack of information that keeps these people out of jail. Or like always, they're given ridiculously short sentences. We see it time and time again. And for that reason, we need to discuss these issues and keep discussing them. Because the crimes I've described here aren't a foreign issue. It's happening all around us. every day in our online and offline communities. The fact a YouTube channel had to seek out and delete all of that data from Boys Town
Starting point is 00:20:02 simply because the government refused to do so is actually so incredibly disheartening. We need to continue to expose the people who are responsible for these horrible crimes, and maybe, just maybe, we can protect the people who are the most vulnerable, the ones who are unable to defend themselves. Want to cry? For this next story, we're talking about the want to cry ransomware attacks. Now, I've briefly covered this story before, but I think this story deserves its own spot in the video. So here is a full rundown of one of the most devastating cyber attacks ever.
Starting point is 00:20:44 A group of people are slaving away on their computers, and they've been going for days. Endless, monotonous days of typing, clicking, and... scrolling. They sleep for a little while, but once the sun is up, they're typing again, a cup of coffee, a bite of some takeout, and a computer. Rinse and repeat, and they never stop. Why? Because this group is composed of some of the most dangerous dark web hackers that have ever touched a computer. Calculated, brilliant, malicious, and today, they're stealing. Not from a bank or a business. They're robbing the United States of America.
Starting point is 00:21:26 Last week, the group discovered an exploit on a government system, an abandoned server, used for testing, with fragile security. If they could crack into the server, it would allow them access to a sensitive series of files, more powerful than anything money could buy. And on August 14, 2016, after days spent trying to infiltrate the system, they finally broke in. Virtually, they toured the server rooms, offices, research facilities, forgotten directories on foreign machines. No one was supposed to have access, but now that they did, they looked for something valuable.
Starting point is 00:22:05 And after a bit of searching, they hit the jackpot. Now, the story I just told you is completely speculative. One of many theories on how this group accessed one of the most secure government agencies on planet Earth. Some believe they were Russian hackers in pay from the Kremlin. Others believe they were just a bunch of foreign computer techs looking for a payday. And regardless of what theory you subscribe to, the facts remain the same. We don't know who they were, what they looked like or where they came from.
Starting point is 00:22:41 But we do know what they stole. And their actions, with just a few days and a couple lines of computer code, nearly ended the world. August 15th, 2016, a group going by the name of the shadow brokers made it post a Tumblr, and within a day, every news outlet in the nation
Starting point is 00:23:00 was talking about it. In broken English, the group explained that they had acquired specialized surveillance tools, stolen from the National Security Agency of the United States, the NSA.
Starting point is 00:23:14 These tools, they claimed, were more powerful than anything the public had ever seen. In the post, they mentioned a program called Stuxnet, which was created by the United States and Israel to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program in 2007, famous amongst government and corporate hackers. When it came to malicious computer viruses,
Starting point is 00:23:37 Stuxnet was top of the line, the industry golden child. But the shadow brokers claimed it was nothing compared to what they had. What they had was. so incredibly powerful, with such potential for destruction, it made Stuxnet look like a middle schooler's best code job, and they would be auctioning the code off, with an intended goal of $1 million in Bitcoin. The group included sample code as proof of their acquisition, and that was that. The plan was in motion.
Starting point is 00:24:10 The race was on. Experts took the stage. Many believed it was a hoax. others believed it was real, but trivial. Quote, the data release so far appears to be relatively old. Some of the programs have already been known for years, said hacker and security researcher Claudio Guerrnelli. It's unlikely to cause any significant operational damage.
Starting point is 00:24:34 But between all of these nudist networks, constantly reaching out for information, the NSA never commented because they'd seen the sample code. and they knew this was no lie. Someone had somehow broken into their systems, and if they couldn't figure out what was stolen and fast, there was no telling what terrors could be unleashed. They hosted an internal assessment to quantify the possible damages, but the shadow brokers were smart.
Starting point is 00:25:04 They left no trace they'd ever access to the servers, so without any information on exactly what was stolen, the NSA prepared for a worst, case scenario. Hunkered down and waited. They tracked the auction over the coming year because no one believed it was authentic. It didn't have nearly enough Bitcoin, a couple hundred at the most. And behind the scenes, the shadow brokers were getting frustrated. Clearly, no one wanted to buy what they were selling, so they made a decision. In April of 2017, one year after the original Tumblr post, they revealed the files to the dark web. So anyone, anywhere, could have free access
Starting point is 00:25:48 to NSA surveillance technology. And in those files were two pieces of critical software. Their names, Eternal Blue and Double Pulsar. First, let's talk about Eternal Blue. Now, on Windows computers, there's a background service called an SMB, or a server message block. Essentially, the SMB lets computers share files, connect with printers, and so on. The SMB only accepts messages, or attempts to connect to your computer, in a very specific format. Think of it like a receptionist. If you file the right paperwork, the receptionist helps you. That's the SMB, and normally, the SMB has security that protects the computer from malicious or foreign devices from connecting.
Starting point is 00:26:37 But on old Windows computers, there was a flaw. Essentially, if you crafted the perfect message, it would overwrite the security and let you in without any trouble. And Eternal Blue was that perfect message. What does this mean in layman's terms? It means that with Eternal Blue, as long as you had a network connection, you had access to any and every Windows computer before a certain age. And once you were in, you could control every process on the computer. But once you're connected, how do you stay connected? And that's where Double Pulsar comes in.
Starting point is 00:27:14 Double Pulsar works like a back door, essentially. Once Eternal Blue breaks into the system, Double Pulsar plants itself in the computer code, allowing future access from anywhere in the world at any given time. And now, both pieces of software were public. Granted, they'd only been released on the dark web, anywhere public was shut down due to national, security, but on untraceable browsers such as the dark web and private chat rooms, hackers across
Starting point is 00:27:44 the world still had access to these files. The NSA was immediately aware of the leak, and once they found out what files had been leaked, they were horrified. Eternal Blue and Double Pulsar were two of the strongest, most devastating viruses the NSA had ever devised, and now that they were public, they had to act fast to protect not just American citizens, but every country on Earth. They coordinated with Microsoft to patch the issue in their older systems and sent out a worldwide update to every computer that was at risk.
Starting point is 00:28:19 Now, if every computer had accepted the update, we'd be in the clear. But once again, there was a problem. But before we get into what that problem was, let's talk about another group, one so demented and dangerous, it was willing to risk it all for a little taste of chaos. early May 2017 somewhere in Asia a group of hackers were laying in wait this group was different from the shadow brokers
Starting point is 00:28:44 while the shadow brokers were in it for the money this group of hackers was in it for the politics they belonged to a foreign nation widely disliked one with lots of enemies and this nation wasn't just interested in money they wanted power
Starting point is 00:29:01 and they were intent on getting it by any means necessary This wasn't just a group of hackers. They were internet mercenaries, a convoy of virtual militants on a mission to hostage the world at gunpoint. And they knew exactly how to do it. They had been working on a new project, one that had the potential to make them millions of dollars overnight, handicapped for nations, and topple the global economy within weeks.
Starting point is 00:29:32 They had developed the perfect ransomware. Now, ransomware is a malicious virus that essentially holds your computer hostage. Once it found its way onto a computer, it hijacks the system, and in order to regain control, you need to pay $300 in Bitcoin. If the user didn't pay within a specific time frame, the program would begin randomly deleting files from the computer until it was inoperable. Now, the program would be devastating if it infected computers en masse, but how would they do that? How do you infect every computer on Earth with a virus all at once before hackers figured out a way to shut you down? How do you build the perfect delivery system?
Starting point is 00:30:18 Well, they didn't need to. They had Eternal Blue and Double Pulsar, the twin insurgents that would infect the world for them and allow their program to wreak worldwide havoc. Once it entered a computer, the virus would self-propagate, spreading exponentially on its own with no way to stop it. They named the program, Want to Cry? But remember what I mentioned earlier?
Starting point is 00:30:45 If everyone just updated their computers, they'd all be fine, right? Yes, that's correct. They could have been all right, but a lot of businesses and institutions have what we call legacy computers. Legacy computers are often too old to run modern updates, but more importantly,
Starting point is 00:31:03 most of them are connected to vital infrastructure, corporations, banks, universities, public services, train systems. Most of these industries operated on older Microsoft systems. And if they updated to a newer version, most of their software would stop working. And because of this, for years and years, everyone in these industries chose to never update, not even when it mattered most. Which meant that on May 12th, 2017, when the Wanna Cry Ransomware virus was released, it didn't stop at one computer, or a hundred, or a thousand. It didn't stop in one town or one nation.
Starting point is 00:31:43 It began to spread around the world. The attack began in the United Kingdom. In the first industry that got hit, hospitals. Nurses and doctors opened computers across the UK to find a red ransomware screen. Your computer is encrypted. your files will be corrupted. Pay now or lose the computer. Immediately, chaos swept through the UK.
Starting point is 00:32:08 Patients were left without critical systems. Medical records were inaccessible. Doctors, nurses, pediatricians, cancer patients, people in active treatment, all held hostage behind a crimson web page. Medical staff went back to paper, doing what they could to service the public, and mitigate the threat on active care. Quote,
Starting point is 00:32:29 computer screens had gone blank. Messages had come up demanding a ransom for their computer to be switched on again. It became apparent within 15 to 20 minutes that there was a very significant cyber attack underway. They called the police, but law enforcement was having their own issues. Government offices and emergency services were both experiencing the same attack. Directions for ambulance workers were inaccessible. Police systems went red. Train stations scrambled to realign their schedules as computer,
Starting point is 00:32:59 ticket booths and internal systems went red. Financial institutions were working tirelessly to block the attack. Businesses instructed their departments. Unplugged the computers. The virus is spreading. University shut down. At the time, they believed it was an attack on the UK alone. But within hours, it was clear.
Starting point is 00:33:21 Most of Europe was infected. In Spain, major telecommunication companies shut down. Cell phones went offline. the landlines went cold. Communication went dark. In Germany, the public transportation system went completely offline. Schedules were inaccessible. People couldn't buy tickets.
Starting point is 00:33:42 31 million rides daily was reduced to nothing in an instant. In Russia, banks and institutions were scrambling to stay afloat. Their IT systems couldn't prevent the attacks. So entire bank branches were locked down, out of their system. employees were reduced to using pen and paper to try and mitigate the damage and keep debit and credit card services online government offices were paralyzed unable to provide basic services in China production screeched to a halt factories and manufacturing systems were all infected especially in the electronic and auto sectors production lines slowed or stopped completely
Starting point is 00:34:24 systems locked computers froze in the US major computer systems were affected. The largest ports in Los Angeles briefly shut down due to computer issues. Hospitals, government offices, and financial institutions scattered to fix their systems before they shut down. Governments all over the world tried desperately to stop the attacks, but it continued to propagate. Every second that passed, another dozen computers were infected. Within 48 hours, over 150 countries were all infected, an estimated. In estimated, two, 230,000 computers were petrified by the red Wanna Cry Ransom screen, and the threat of a global, economic, and structural collapse became a very real possibility.
Starting point is 00:35:11 Then, a miracle. A 22-year-old cybersecurity researcher named Marcus Hutchins was analyzing the WannaCry Ransomware in a sandbox, a simulation, to try and figure out how it ran. He had taught himself coding from an early age and was fascinated by malware. When Wanna Cry began spreading, he was fascinated and decided to try to analyze the code. And while he was digging around, he found something strange. Every time Wanna Cry spread to a new computer, it attempted to connect to a random domain, made from a string of random letters and numbers, not randomly generated, a unique domain.
Starting point is 00:35:51 One single domain. Marcus found this incredibly odd. Why was it trying to connect to a website that didn't? exist. And just to see what would happen, he registered the domain. And what happened next was nothing short of incredible. Want to Cry stopped spreading. What Marcus had inadvertently discovered was the kill switch. Every time WannaCry infected a new computer, it checked that random domain to see if it was active. If the domain was unregistered, it continued to spread. But if it was registered, the virus stopped spreading.
Starting point is 00:36:31 And just like that, for the low, low price of $9.99, Marcus had accidentally stopped the spread of the Wanna Cry ransomware, single-handedly saving hundreds of thousands of computers all over the world. In total, the damage caused by Wanna Cry cost a terrifying four, billion dollars worldwide and lost productivity and repair costs. And that was only after two days. If the kill switch had not been accidentally discovered, who knows what systems might have been infected and what catastrophic damage the virus might have caused. A worldwide hunt for the creators of WannaCry began immediately. Cybersecurity agencies collaborated to analyze the malware, trace payments of Bitcoin through the blockchain, and they discovered some similarities between
Starting point is 00:37:22 want to cry and a different ransomware. Firstly, the payment amount was the same. Small amounts of money in the hundreds of dollars, always transferred by Bitcoin. They recognize the writing style, in the fact certain portions of code have been recycled from previous attacks, led them to confront their number one suspect. North Korea. In North Korea, there's an organization called the Lazarus Group. Officially, they claim it doesn't exist.
Starting point is 00:37:49 But in reality, it's a state-sponsored organization. whose sole purpose is to create ransomware, hack financial institutions, and steal as much money for the North Korean government as humanly possible. It's responsible for many high-profile attacks, especially against South Korea. Using information from those previous attacks,
Starting point is 00:38:09 it's safe to say, the Lazarus Group created the Wanna Cry ransomware. The North Korean government has never accepted responsibility for the attacks, but no one has ever been charged. But regardless of their official take, the Wanna Cry Ransomware attack is one of the most horrifying events in modern history. People could have died.
Starting point is 00:38:29 Hundreds of thousands of industries would have been set back decades, slowing to a snail's pace, sending the global economy on a downward trajectory that could have left millions of people jobless and starving. Now, all we can do is speculate on what might have happened. If Marcus hadn't accidentally found that kill switch, What terrifying fate awaited us in the weeks or months Living in a world infected with Wanna Cry And all right guys, that wraps up the horrors of the dark web Please comment down below your thoughts on this video. Did you enjoy it? I thought the first
Starting point is 00:39:08 Case, the Boys Town website was beyond horrific And the second one was just mind-blowing I've just never heard of it before but yeah These were some insane horrific things that I found on the dark web And if you enjoyed this video please like the video subscribe to the channel, check out some other videos on the channel, follow me on Spotify, follow me on Instagram, all that jazz. And I just want to say, thank you so much for watching. It means a world. And this is Snook, and I'll see you next time. Bye.

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