By definition, a dark website is a pre-made, non-visible website, that can be activated online when a particular crisis occurs. It is common for most companies to have several ones and all of them are customized according to certain vulnerabilities and corporate risks. They store written-in-advance news releases, pictures, official statements and other background information, as the specific details will only be added right before their release.
The dark site can be placed on a separate domain, be a distinct section of the main website or totally replace the original. It could be saved on any of the corporate servers or be kept safely on a preferred external device.
Because of the significance of dark websites, they have also become targets of many malicious scenarios. Probably the scariest threat for companies is someone intentionally triggering the content of the site online, without the permission of management. The system administrators will soon repair the “mistake”, but the point here is totally different. The actual goal of the attackers is not to create a false appearance of crisis, but to make a destructive buzz and to lower the public trust towards the target. Even if instantly refuted by the corporate crisis team, the situation will still be strong enough to cause a massive confusion among the audience, especially when all of the Web 2.0 applications allow you to achieve that in a matter of minutes. And remember - the information on the Internet always remains cached, so the chances of someone going back to those issues are actually pretty high.
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Black PR is pretty interesting stuff.
Why attack a huge mega-corporation's firewall, when you could attack their stock price just as easy (perhaps even easier)?
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