In
espionage
Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering, as a subfield of the intelligence field, is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information ( intelligence). A person who commits espionage on a mission-specific contract is called an ...
parlance, a cutout is a mutually trusted intermediary, method or channel of communication that facilitates the exchange of information between
agents. Cutouts usually know only the source and destination of the information to be transmitted, not the identities of any other persons involved in the espionage process (
need to know basis). Thus, a captured cutout cannot be used to identify members of an
espionage cell. The cutout also isolates the source from the destination, so neither necessarily knows the other.
Outside espionage
Some computer protocols, like
Tor
Tor, TOR or ToR may refer to:
Places
* Toronto, Canada
** Toronto Raptors
* Tor, Pallars, a village in Spain
* Tor, former name of Sloviansk, Ukraine, a city
* Mount Tor, Tasmania, Australia, an extinct volcano
* Tor Bay, Devon, England
* Tor ...
, use the equivalent of ''cutout nodes'' in their communications networks. The use of multiple layers of encryption usually stops nodes on such networks from knowing the ultimate sender or receiver of the data.
In
computer network
A computer network is a collection of communicating computers and other devices, such as printers and smart phones. In order to communicate, the computers and devices must be connected by wired media like copper cables, optical fibers, or b ...
ing, darknets have some cutout functionality.
Darknets are distinct from other distributed
peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network, forming a peer-to-peer network of Node ...
(P2P) networks, as sharing is anonymous, ''i.e.'',
IP address
An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is assigned to a device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. IP addresses serve two main functions: network interface i ...
es are not publicly shared and nodes often forward traffic to other nodes. Thus, with a darknet, users can communicate with little fear of governmental or corporate interference.
Darknets are thus often associated with dissident political communications as well as various illegal activities.
See also
*
Dead drop
References
Espionage techniques
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