Actor - Dark Web Scraper

Shine a Light on the Dark Web — Responsibly

The Dark Web Scraper is a powerful OSINT tool built for cybersecurity professionals, threat intelligence analysts, academic researchers, and security teams who need structured, automated access to publicly accessible Tor (.onion) sites — without the complexity of managing a TOR stack themselves.

Intended use: This actor is strictly designed for lawful Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) activities, including cybersecurity research, threat intelligence gathering, digital forensics support, and academic investigation of publicly accessible Tor-based websites. Use of this actor must comply with all applicable laws and Apify's Terms of Service.

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Why Use Dark Web Scraper?

The dark web is a significant source of threat intelligence — leaked credentials, exposed API keys, active phishing infrastructure, and emerging threat actor activity all surface there first. Dark Web Scraper lets you monitor and investigate these sources systematically and at scale, without manual browsing.

Who is this for?

• Security Operations (SOC) teams monitoring for leaked credentials or corporate data exposure
• Threat intelligence analysts tracking threat actor infrastructure and indicators of compromise (IOCs)
• Penetration testers & red teams identifying exposed assets during engagements
• Researchers & academics studying the structure and content of the Tor network
• Journalists & investigators conducting lawful open-source investigations

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Key Features

• Keyword Search — Search publicly accessible Dark Web pages for specific keywords and retrieve structured results. Ideal for monitoring mentions of your brand, domain, or known threat actor handles.

• IOC Extraction — Automatically extract publicly exposed indicators such as email addresses, phone numbers, API keys, and cryptocurrency wallet addresses to feed directly into your threat intelligence pipeline.

• Full TOR Network Support — Built-in TOR proxy integration lets you reach .onion sites reliably, without any local TOR setup. Designed for legitimate OSINT and cybersecurity research only.

• Depth & Volume Control — Fine-tune crawl depth and page limits to run targeted, efficient investigations — from a quick surface scan to a deep-dive across an entire .onion domain.

• Fully Extensible — Drop in your own extraction function to capture custom data patterns specific to your research workflow.

• Blazing Fast — Scrapes ~100 pages in 5 seconds with just ~0.1–0.2 compute units when pages are responsive.

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Input Parameters

The input is a JSON object with the following fields:

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
startUrls	Array	Optional	List of .onion URLs to begin crawling from
search	String	Optional	Keyword to search across Dark Web pages
maxDepth	Number	Optional	Maximum link depth to crawl. Lower values = faster, shallower scans
maxPages	Number	Optional	Cap on total pages crawled per run
maxItems	Number	Optional	Cap on total items extracted per run
extendOutputFunction	String	Optional	Custom JS function ($) => ({}) for extracting additional fields

Tips

• To target a specific .onion page, paste the URL directly into startUrls.
• Set maxDepth: 1 for a fast surface-level scan of a single site.
• Use search combined with startUrls to find keyword occurrences within a known site.

Example Input

{
  "startUrls": [
    "http://xjfbpuj56rdazx4iolylxplbvyft2onuerjeimlcqwaihp3s6r4xebqd.onion/"
  ],
  "search": "Dark Web",
  "maxDepth": 5,
  "maxPages": 10
}

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During the Run

The actor logs real-time progress for every page it visits, including the current URL, item counts, and any errors. If invalid input is detected, the run halts immediately with a clear explanation — no silent failures.

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Output & Export

Results are stored in Apify's structured dataset and can be consumed via the Apify API in any language — Python, Node.js, PHP, and more.

Output Schema

Each scraped page produces a record like this:

{
  "url": "http://xjfbpuj56rdazx4iolylxplbvyft2onuerjeimlcqwaihp3s6r4xebqd.onion/cellar-door/",
  "links": [
    "http://xjfbpuj56rdazx4iolylxplbvyft2onuerjeimlcqwaihp3s6r4xebqd.onion/",
    "http://xjfbpuj56rdazx4iolylxplbvyft2onuerjeimlcqwaihp3s6r4xebqd.onion/faq/",
    "http://xjfbpuj56rdazx4iolylxplbvyft2onuerjeimlcqwaihp3s6r4xebqd.onion/support/"
  ],
  "emails": [],
  "phones": [],
  "cryptoAddresses": {},
  "misc": {
    "Twitter username": ["@S_Config"],
    "Instagram username": ["@S_Config"]
  },
  "searchKeywordFound": false
}

Field	Description
url	The page URL that was scraped
links	All hyperlinks found on the page
emails	Email addresses extracted from the page
phones	Phone numbers extracted from the page
cryptoAddresses	Cryptocurrency wallet addresses by coin type
misc	Other extracted identifiers (social handles, usernames, etc.)
searchKeywordFound	Whether your search keyword appeared on this page

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Bugs, Feature Requests & Changelog

This scraper is actively maintained. Have a feature request or found a bug? Open an issue on GitHub.

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Contact

Visit epctex.com to explore our full catalog of data extraction tools. Need a custom integration or have a specific use case? Reach out via the chat on epctex.com or email us at business@epctex.com.