The DarkNet, or darknet, was a banking and communications system that could host encrypted bank accounts and be used to send files. In 232 BBY, the Nihil Tempest Runner Kassav Milliko extorted the Eriadu system's Governor Mural Veen for fifty million credits, which she transferred into his encrypted darknet account. In 0 ABY, shortly after the Battle of Yavin, the Rebel Alliance used the DarkNet to spread footage of the space battle that had resulted in the destruction of the Death Star, which the smuggler Lando Calrissian and his friend Lobot watched from a cantina.
The DarkNet, also known as the darknet, was a communications and banking system. The system could be used to host encryption-protected bank accounts that allowed for untraceable deposits, and files from the DarkNet could be accessed for viewing through holo-screens.
Tempest Runner Kassav Milliko controlled a bank account on the darnket.
The darknet was in operation by the time of the High Republic Era, and the Nihil Tempest Runner Kassav Milliko used the system to host a bank account under his control. In 232 BBY, Milliko attempted to extort Governor Mural Veen for fifty million credits by offering to destroy incoming hyperspace debris—Emergences—which would be impacting her system, the Outer Rim's Eriadu system, in the near future. After Tempest Runner had his associate, the Nihil slicer Wet Bub, send over his darknet account's encrypted banking information, Veen reluctantly had the necessary funds transferred to the darknet account. However, partially due to the governor's brief hesitation in sending the credits, Milliko's flagship—the New Elite—failed to destroy the Emergence due to a weapons targeting miscalculation, which resulted in the deaths of 1.2 billion individuals on Eriadu's inhabited moon.
During the Imperial Era, the Rebel Alliance used the system to air anti-Imperial propaganda clips. In 0 ABY, shortly after the Battle of Yavin, the Rebel Alliance leaked footage of the space battle in the Yavin system on the DarkNet, which displayed the destruction of the Death Star—the Empire's moon-sized planet-killing battle station. As the leaked footage spread quickly, the smuggler Lando Calrissian watched it in a cantina with several patrons, including his close friend Lobot. The cantina owner, Okkul, had already watched the footage multiple times but did not mind playing it again for Calrissian, who was surprised to see his old starship—the Millennium Falcon—participating in the battle.
The DarkNet was first mentioned in the short story "The Angle," authored by Charles Soule as part of the 2017 anthology From a Certain Point of View. The system was first capitalized as darknet in Light of the Jedi, a 2021 novel written by Charles Soule as part of the Star Wars: The High Republic multimedia project's Phase I. The real-world Darknet is a part of the Internet that is not indexed by regular web search engines and where anonymously run websites exist.