World3 min(s) read
Published 14:03 01 May 2026 GMT
A veteran hacker has opened up about the most disturbing things he’s encountered while navigating the dark web.
To put it into context, most people use what’s known as the surface web, which is anything you can find through search engines.
Beneath that sits the deep web, which includes password-protected or paywalled content, and then beyond that is the dark web, a hidden layer of the internet that requires special browsers and is often associated with anonymity, encryption, and criminality.
In an interview with Vice Media in 2021, the anonymous hacker said he now works as a “white hat,” meaning he uses his skills to improve security rather than exploit it. A big part of his work involves tracking ransomware, where hackers lock victims out of their own systems and demand payment to restore access.
But it’s the actions of so-called “black hat” hackers that he finds most alarming. Having once been part of that world himself, he described some of them as “destructive attackers” who “want to see the world burn.”
Among the worst cases he’s witnessed are cyberattacks on hospitals, where critical patient data is held hostage. “I've watched hospitals get encrypted and people are left with a choice: do I pay to decrypt the data or do I risk lives?” he said.
He explained how the scale of these attacks has dramatically increased over time: “Back when it started ransomware was charging hundreds of dollars, maybe thousands of dollars for individual targets. The bigger payouts that we're talking about now are easily into the tens of millions.”
In one particularly extreme case, he said: “This last, most recent attack, they offered $70 million dollars for the campaign key, which is the key that would have unlocked every single computer encrypted during that attack. So we're talking high-stakes games here.”
Another ethical hacker, Ryan Montgomery, also shared his experiences, describing the dark web as filled with deeply troubling content. He said it hosts “horrible” sites that “do horrible things,” adding: “There’s counterfeit money, there’s fake IDs, there all kinds of different websites that do horrible things.”
Montgomery said he has sometimes had to access these spaces to track down “predators and pedophiles,” highlighting how law enforcement and security experts may still operate there for investigative purposes.
He also pointed to the existence of so-called “murder-for-hire” websites, where individuals offer cryptocurrency payments, often in Bitcoin, to have someone killed. However, he noted that many of these are scams designed to trick users into handing over money.
Altogether, these hackers' accounts paint a picture of a hidden online world where the stakes can be extremely high, and in some cases, life-threatening.
