John Hammond is a well-regarded figure in the infosec community, and he recently launched his own online learning platform. I decided to check it out and took the Dark Web & Cybercrime Investigation course. In this review, I’ll share my impressions and discuss the pros and cons.
TL;DR: This course is a great introduction for beginners looking to start their journey as dark web investigators. It’s also useful for aspiring forensics and threat intelligence professionals. However, if you’re more experienced, you likely won’t learn much new.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with John Hammond or Just Hacking Training. I paid the full course fee.
Course Content and Structure
The course consists of seven main chapters, plus an introduction and conclusion:
The lessons cover a lot of historical background information—by “historical,” I mean anything older than a year or two—that helps contextualize today’s cybercrime landscape. The full chapter outline is available on the justhacking website if you click the “Course Details and Purchase” button: https://www.justhacking.com/course/dark-web-cybercrime-investigations/
Instructor and Teaching Style
If you’ve watched any of John Hammond’s videos, you know his teaching style—engaging, beginner-friendly, and full of interesting examples. Since he has such a large YouTube following and is well-known in the industry, there’s not much more to say. Watch a few of his videos, and you’ll get a good sense of what to expect.
Course Materials and Resources
The course mainly consists of short texts explaining key concepts, terms, and the different sources relevant to dark web investigations. Everything is structured clearly and easy to follow.
The course primarily consists of text-based lessons supplemented by videos. Often, the videos repeat the text verbatim, so you can choose between reading or watching. Some lessons include links to John Hammond’s older YouTube videos. If you’ve been a long-time subscriber, you may recognise some of them.
The lessons themselves are short—on average, about half a page of text. Each chapter contains anywhere from four to nine lessons, making the entire course completable in a day.
Compared to other Just Hacking Training courses (which I haven’t taken yet, so I am basing this off the course descriptions), this one lacks hands-on exercises or practical labs. The course description states:
“Since it’s impossible to recreate the dark web in VMs, there’s no virtual environment. But we still want you to get some hands-on experience, so we’ve included exercises that you can do on your own to get a more intuitive understanding of how this world works including creating your own dark web site and scraping contents from the dark web using Python.”
The Python web scraping exercise is fun, but beyond that, there isn’t much practical content. Given the nature of the subject, I understand why, but more interactive elements would have been beneficial.
One very notable omission is any guidance on how to actually find cybercrime forums and marketplaces. While I understand why John Hammond avoids linking to illegal content, the methodology for discovering these resources—such as using link directories, searching the clear web, and leveraging Telegram—should have been covered. Essentially, the course tells you what exists on the dark web but not how to find it. If you were expecting to find a “Tor-Google,” you’ll be out of luck.
Value for Money
From what I can tell, you retain lifetime access to purchased courses, which is a great perk compared to platforms that impose time limits. The real question is whether these courses will receive regular updates and if the platform will gain enough traction to remain sustainable.
For now, I think the value-for-money proposition is fair, but the course is clearly aimed at beginners. For around $100, you get a decent introduction to cybercrime on the dark web. I just wish there were more guidance on navigating Tor and finding relevant resources.
Final Verdict and Recommendation
As mentioned multiple times, this course is a solid introduction for beginners. If you’re already experienced in dark web investigations and have sock puppet accounts on Breach Forums, XSS, Dread, etc., you probably won’t gain much from it.
I appreciate what John Hammond is doing to make cybersecurity education more accessible. Many courses on Just Hacking Training cost under $100 or offer pay-what-you-can pricing, which is commendable. I may try another course or two to see what they offer, and if I do, I’ll post a review here.
If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment or reach out to me on Mastodon @0hypothesis