SoK: An Evaluation of the Secure End User Experience on the Dark Net through Systematic Literature Review
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper is well written and has scientific validity. Some issues that can significantly improve its quality are presented below:
- A detailed description must be included in the paper that emphasizes the main pros and cons of the authors’ proposal with regard to the state of the art.
- I think the motivations for this study need to be made clearer.
- Some figures are small and apparently of low resolution. If the authors consider that provides important information, they should definitely enlarge it to be clear and legible.
- The discussion section could include some contributions to the international literature in addition to the most interesting literature.
Author Response
1. A detailed description must be included in the paper that emphasizes the main pros and cons of the authors’ proposal with regard to the state of the art.
We added and modified the following content:
In summary, through this SOK we propose the larger research community to explore more diverse avenues in the Dark Net research. As pointed above, we have highlighted four important aspects of research that needs to be studied in the future to gain a better understanding of Dark Net use. The benefits of outlining the research gaps is obvious; studying these less-explored topics will help not only the researchers but overall user community to understand the privacy and security risks of Dark Net use. This awareness will aid users from all walks to interact with this medium more carefully. The only drawback of studying these highlighted issues is that such studies might require more resources.
2. I think the motivations for this study need to be made clearer.
Added and edited the following in the Introduction:
There is an increase of Dark Net usage among general users because of the anonymity the Dark Net provides, in these circumstances it is crucial to review the research conducted so far and to study the gaps in the knowledge that needs to be further explored. More importantly, as researchers we should study the privacy and security aspects of the Dark Net usage to aid non-malicious users in these platforms. Thus, the need to understand the body of work done so far in this field and to drive future work towards analyzing privacy and security aspect of the Dark Net usage from a users perspective has motivated our paper.
3. Some figures are small and apparently of low resolution. If the authors consider that provides important information, they should definitely enlarge it to be clear and legible.
we have changed the figures to make them a better resolution and made them bigger when possible
4. The discussion section could include some contributions to the international literature in addition to the most interesting literature.
Contributions and loopholes in the literature has been updated and added as well
Reviewer 2 Report
Date: 13.4.2022
Manuscript Titled: “SoK an Evaluation of the Secure End User Experience on the Dark Net Through Systematic Literature Review”
Manuscript ID: JSP- 1686209
Journal: JSP
The aim of the study is exhibiting a holistic overview of the existing literature on secure end user experience on the darknet. The research was based on a collection of 2,693 academic paper where 200/2,693 papers were used for farther and categorized into 6 different them in the domain of privacy and security. In general, I enjoyed reading the manuscript. The quality of the manuscript is quite good. In most parts the manuscript is well written and exhibits a structure of the scheme based an acceptable logic analysis. However, to be accepted for publication in “JCP” I find that the following Minor issues should be addressed:
Minor Comments:
- 2 lines 77-72– Please provide ref to the paragraph.
- 3 lines 90-91 – The authors found that 200 articles analyzing the privacy and security of the dark net, however in lines 89 it was said that 2,693 were found on the topic of privacy and security. Please explain the difference between the two.
- 3 lines 120-124 – please provide a ref to the section.
- 4 lines 156-157, please delete it repeats already said text such as in line 142.
- 4 lines 173-178, I suggest adding a search on the Web of Science, it might change the collection and the (n=9) articles which are found on user study, (p.5) might be higher.
- 4 line 187, please mention how did you contact the authors of the paper that didn’t have an open access (through E-mail?).
- 5 please add the family name of the authors in line 203 (ref 26,27)
- 7 figure 2: It might be that the embedding algorithms are also used for analysis and monitoring? I suggest checking the each category (framework) in the graph is well separated from the other categories. Also please provide a title to the X and Y axis.
- 8 The dots for each of the papers within the framework is not sufficient, this also applies for figure 6,78, 10,11, 12 & 14. A table with a summary of the main finding within the paper for the most prominent papers in the respected year would be helpful.
- 8 lines 254-257, I think the lines can be deleted or alternatively please explain their contribution.
- 11 lines 381, please elaborate on the “proper tools” if possible.
- 11 line 385, please provide the name of the Net forums as described by Lin et al.
- 12 line 375, please try to explain why two papers pertaining to ethical and legal implications
- 12, the 9 studies which are used for analysis related to the user perception of privacy and security, is very small portion of the whole collection even from the 200 articles. I suggest tackle this in limitation and/or alternatively try to find more paper with additional key words.
- 15 line 499, please explain or elaborate on the “valuable insight into user’s experience navigating these networks the sentence is general. It is also concerning in line 508 to find that only 2 were generic, so I suggest tackling this in the limitation.
- 16 line 938, Can we assume that there is a “fear” to explore the content of the darknet, or being exposed to criminals? I suggest the authors to search for supported explanation in the literature (maybe search for fear of searching content and the darknet). May this explain that no-paper focuses on the content of the darknet?
- The conclusion is very general, and I would expect the authors to explain their findings with the support of the literature (already shown in section 2 – Related work).
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Minor Comments:
1). 2 lines 77-72– Please provide ref to the paragraph.
line 72 has citation #9 and line 77 has citation #10 both ref are present in the bibliography
2). 3 lines 90-91 – The authors found that 200 articles analyzing the privacy and security of the dark net, however in lines 89 it was said that 2,693 were found on the topic of privacy and security. Please explain the difference between the two.
In the introduction (line 89-91) we have added those papers were excluded for different reasons, we also added some details to the Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria subsection
3). lines 120-124 – please provide a ref to the section.
We have added the required references.
4). lines 156-157, please delete it repeats already said text such as in line 142.
We have deleted the repeated lines
5). 4lines 173-178, I suggest adding a search on the Web of Science, it might change the collection and the (n=9) articles which are found on user study, (p.5) might be higher.
We have searched Web of Science but did not find any papers thus excluded the database from this work.
6). line 187, please mention how did you contact the authors of the paper that didn’t have an open access (through E-mail?).
We clarified by adding the following details:
For these papers that were not available for open access, we reached out to the authors via email to gain access to the full-text.
7). please add the family name of the authors in line 203 (ref 26,27)
Added author's last names along with citation McInnes et al, Moher et al.
8). figure 2: It might be that the embedding algorithms are also used for analysis and monitoring? I suggest checking the each category (framework) in the graph is well separated from the other categories. Also please provide a title to the X and Y axis.
We checked the categories and made them well separated and the 2 papers related to algorithm embedding can not be added to any of the other categories based on our analysis.
9). The dots for each of the papers within the framework is not sufficient, this also applies for figure 6,7,8, 10,11, 12 & 14. A table with a summary of the main finding within the paper for the most prominent papers in the respected year would be helpful.
since all of the papers were equally analyzed, we added a table that included all of the tables.
10). lines 254-257, I think the lines can be deleted or alternatively please explain their contribution.
Edited the following section: Figure[REF: image] shows a detailed timeline of publications of papers related to the theme of frameworks and technological solutions of Dark Net privacy and security. This timeline demonstrates the growing awareness and subsequent study of privacy and security in Dark Net research.
11). lines 381, please elaborate on the “proper tools” if possible.
Explained more about the paper cited in this line. Added details of the tools throughout.
12). line 385, please provide the name of the Net forums as described by Lin et al.
the paper doesn't provide the name of the forums used, they provide how they got by these forums but not the specific name of each forum AS such I didn't modify this section
13). line 375, please try to explain why two papers pertaining to ethical and legal implications
Explained.
there was a total of 7 papers pertaining to ethical and legal implications, 2 of which were published in 2018, I fixed the phrasing since it was a little confusing}
14). the 9 studies which are used for analysis related to the user perception of privacy and security, is very small portion of the whole collection even from the 200 articles. I suggest tackle this in limitation and/or alternatively try to find more paper with additional key words.
Extended the limitations and future work section to discuss more about user studies
+ (THE BOTTOM COMMENT)
15). line 499, please explain or elaborate on the “valuable insight into user’s experience navigating these networks the sentence is general. It is also concerning in line 508 to find that only 2 were generic, so I suggest tackling this in the limitation.
Discussed it in the limitation.
16). line 938, Can we assume that there is a “fear” to explore the content of the darknet, or being exposed to criminals? I suggest the authors to search for supported explanation in the literature (maybe search for fear of searching content and the darknet). May this explain that no-paper focuses on the content of the darknet?
Added the following section: Due to its anonymity feature and lack of policing, Dark Net markets has been flourishing. With the advancement of technology Dark Net has been becoming increasingly more accessible to general population. In this scenario, there is a chance that users who are not aware of the threats and risks associated with Dark Net might fall trap to criminal activities or traps set by various police agencies.
17). The conclusion is very general, and I would expect the authors to explain their findings with the support of the literature (already shown in section 2 – Related work).
We have made our result specific suggestions in the discussion and implication. Additionally, our conclusion summarizes our work and provides literature gap for future research purposes.
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors of this paper focused on the emerging issue of the dark and specifically on the secure end-user experience, by providing a systematic literature review. To achieve their goals, the authors studied approximately 200 published papers from the literature.
Despite the fact that the whole concept is very interesting, there are a few issues that the reviewer would like to raise with the authors.
Although the theme is the end-user experience, there is not enough focus on the tools that allow the users to interact with the dark net. There is not even a clarification of the major differences between I2P and TOR.
The contributions of the paper are mixed with the summary. They should be isolated and in bullet point format.
The related work section should be renamed to competing surveys.
A table should be added at the end of the related work section, summarizing the novelties of this effort.
The papers collected should be positioned under a taxonomy. The identified categories do not have intuitive connections between them.
The timeline figures could be reshaped into a continuous axis with dates. It would be more intuitive and readable.
Section Implications should be renamed to the discussion.
The future directions of the authors’ research activities are not clear and only vague references are made.
Author Response
The authors of this paper focused on the emerging issue of the dark and specifically on the secure end-user experience, by providing a systematic literature review. To achieve their goals, the authors studied approximately 200 published papers from the literature.
Despite the fact that the whole concept is very interesting, there are a few issues that the reviewer would like to raise with the authors.
Although the theme is the end-user experience, there is not enough focus on the tools that allow the users to interact with the dark net. There is not even a clarification of the major differences between I2P and TOR.
Author responses: ADDED the following:
There are many specialized Dark Net surfing systems available today, some examples of these systems are: The Onion Router (TOR), Free Net, Invisible Internet Project (I2P), Java Anonymous Proxy called Jon Do (JAP) and so on. Two most popular among these systems are TOR and I2P. Although, both of these systems provide same functionality, which explore Dark Net anonymously, the main difference lies in the implementation of the systems. Tor uses at least three nodes (devices) to relay encrypted messages to prevent traceability and preserve anonymity. In contrast, I2P creates a virtual network between the sender and receiver of the message which cannot be tapped by a third party like internet service provider.
The contributions of the paper are mixed with the summary. They should be isolated and in bullet point format.
Author responses: In summary the contribution of this paper is as follows:
Provide a comprehensive overview of all themes and subjects explored so far in the field of Dark Net research.
Highlight the importance of study of privacy and security in Dark Net from the user's perspective.
Point out the gaps and less studied themes in the Dark Net study.
The related work section should be renamed to competing surveys.A table should be added at the end of the related work section, summarizing the novelties of this effort.
The papers collected should be positioned under a taxonomy. The identified categories do not have intuitive connections between them.
The timeline figures could be reshaped into a continuous axis with dates. It would be more intuitive and readable.
All the timeline figures have been reshaped to add a continuous axis with dates as well as references for all the papers
Section Implications should be renamed to the discussion.
Author responses: We have renamed the Results and Discussions section to Results and the Implications section to Discussion and Implication. Given some of the recommendation in the Implication section is not coming from the paper but actually informing the research community on the next potential direction, thus we kept the subsection heading accordingly.
The future directions of the authors’ research activities are not clear and only vague references are made.
Author responses: EDITED the final paragraph of section Limitation and Future Work:
This shows the research gap, and thus in the future extension of our work, we plan to conduct a literature review of user studies pertaining to privacy and security of Dark Net using specific keywords based search. We also plan to contribute to the field by conducting user studies to evaluated the user perceptions and experiences of Dark Net usage while focusing primarily on their privacy and security perspective. In such a user study, we would like to compare the differences in perceptions and experiences of users based on their age-group and technical abilities. This would also be an opportunity to review the kinds of privacy and security threats users face in Dark Net and measure their awareness of these risks. Privacy and security risks in Dark Net is an apparent concern for the users, as shown through the different user study evaluations. As we acknowledge the difficulty in obtaining such user participation, we emphasize the criticality of understanding the perception of the Dark Net amongst any user, given the secretive yet vulnerable nature of the platform.
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
All comments have been addressed.
