Hacker group Anonymous has brought down one fifth of Tor-based websites as a vigilante move. Anonymous infiltrated the Freedom Hosting II servers and brought down around 10,000 websites sharing child pornography.

The Dark Web is part of the World Wide Web which exists on overlay darknets and networks. It uses public Internet, but it can only be accessed through several specific software, particular configuration or authorization codes. Dark Web or Deep Web content is not listed by search engines and maintains an anonymous identity and activity.

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Freedom Hosting II is the biggest host of websites on the Dark Web. Anonymous was able to breach down the host servers and now has access to gigabytes of data which they downloaded from the service.

According to Dark Web researcher Sarah Jamie Lewis, "Looks like Freedom Hosting II got pwned. They hosted close to 20% of all dark web sites (previous @OnionScan report)." Lewis said that Freedom Hosting II hosts about 15 to 20 percent of underground websites on the Dark Web.

"Since OnionScan started in April we have observed FHII hosting between 1500 and 2000 services or about 15-20% of the total number of active sites in our scanning lists," stated Lewis in her OnionScan 2016 report.

All underground sites hosted by Freedom Hosting II are .onion, and users can access it through the browser Tor. People who visited the hacked sites got a message that said, "Hello, Freedom Hosting II, you have been hacked." The hackers have demanded a ransom of 0.1 bitcoin which is equivalent to about $100. They were able to compromise and download 2.6 GB of database and 75 GB of files from host servers.

According to the Anonymous hackers, Freedom Hosting II servers was attacked after they learned that the host manages child porn sites. Around half of the downloaded data include child pornography. They claim that Freedom Hosting II knows of these websites. In 2013, Freedom Hosting was prosecuted for child porn by the government.