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Some even claim to have a killswitch that will automatically wipe their servers if their operations are ever compromised by law enforcement. Dark web vendors are merchants who sell illicit goods and services in underground marketplaces hosted on the dark web. In our blog this week, we’re taking a deep dive into dark web vendors and their role in the underground economy. We’ll also explore how you can safeguard your organization against cyber threats by proactively monitoring illicit vendors and their activity on the dark web. Dark web vendors play a vital role in the illicit digital economy, supplying hackers, spammers, and fraudsters with the information, tools, and resources they need to defraud their victims or launch damaging cyber attacks. The dark web is a part of the internet that isn’t indexed by search engines.
Europol,FBI, and theDEA published press releases Tuesday, March 26, 2019, regarding Dark Web drug trafficking operations. The FBI also released a video containing shots of Dream Market drugs referencingOperation SaboTor. If law enforcement activity is the reason, the Joint Criminal Opioid and Darknet Enforcement (J-CODE) team is a high possibility. They are multiple agencies that include the FBI, DEA, HSI, CBP, USPIS, DOJ, and DOD with the support of Europol. Past large shuttered marketplaces that immediately come to mind include Silk Road 1 & 2, AlphaBay, and Hansa.
Black Market Drugs
The Hive was featured in a Dateline NBC special called The “X” Files in 2001, bringing the subject into public discourse. From 2003, the “Research Chemical Mailing List” would discuss sourcing “Research Chemicals” from legal and grey sources as an alternative to forums such as alt.drugs.psychedelics. However Operation Web Tryp led to a series of website shut downs and arrests in this area. “Most of the dark web is drugs, fraud — your hacked information, your stolen credit cards, that sort of thing — and child exploitation, a massive amount of child exploitation,” she said.
In 2021, these malicious actors and international drug dealers made $3.1 billion in crypto through these dark web sources, but in 2022, they only made approximately $1.5 billion. The closure of the world’s biggest single darknet market triggered a battle for succession, involving cyber attacks, PR stunts and even the war in Ukraine. For more information on darknet markets, you can read the full report by Chainalysis here. Interestingly enough, if you were to exclude Hydra and other darknet markets that serve a particular region, the darknet markets are much less concentrated with several different markets taking in significant revenue. Liberty Market administrators stated slow growth as the reason for their shutdown, quoting “Liberty as of right now has a small but decently sized business”.
Dark Web Acess
The volume of views and the velocity of the data as it traveled through the Dark Web compared to 6 years ago has made it clear that the usage of the Dark Web has grown. These are likely a confluence of several factors that range from an increasing number of breaches occurring, to more avenues to monetize exfiltrated data. These economics are likely going to embolden hackers and cybercriminals even further to continue their efforts to steal data, which can lead to monetary gain or notoriety.
- Vendors and buyers are already surveying the remaining markets and deciding which ones to shift their business to.
- This has fueled paranoia among darknet market users, with many suspecting law enforcement involvement in every market closure.
- The dark web has flourished thanks to bitcoin, the crypto-currency that enables two parties to conduct a trusted transaction without knowing each other’s identity.
- Bloomberg Television takes you behind the scenes of our award winning magazine “Bloomberg BusinessWeek.” Carol Massar and Jason Kelly talk with the writers who break news on a weekly basis and get a lighter touch from the editor who oversees the Etc. section.
- From there, use encryption software and the best Google Chrome security and privacy extensions to shore up your security and privacy.
Still, there was close to $3.8 billion worth of crypto stolen through hacks in 2022, with huge spikes happening in March and October. Like last year, DeFi projects were the most-targeted crypto entities by hackers, accounting for over 82% of all hacks last year. Some, such as Julia Finess, have become popular and also made a name for themselves on TikTok. “They show an affluent lifestyle with expensive apartments, luxury brands, but with a touch of illicit intrigue.” Many of Telegram’s Russian drug bloggers are most likely sponsored by new darknet drug shops. They often wear clothes with shop logos and publish price lists and post links.
AlphaBay Is Taking Over the Dark Web—Again
Last year, Monero cryptocurrency replaced Bitcoin as payment, and pretty good privacy encryption methods ruled the day. Chainalysis’ report noted that Hydra Marketplace had still been the highest grossing market in 2022, despite its early demise. Despite the defunct site’s nod to the mythical Greek beast, that if you cut off one head, two grow in its place, no other drug marketplace beat Hydra’s four month revenue lead the entire year. By its height, it had a 93% stranglehold on all value from the dark net ecosystem. Police said that the dark net service was responsible for $1.3 billion dollars of drug sales in 2020 alone. Dark net markets and fraud shops revenue reportedly tumbled last year after reaching highs of $3.1 billion in 2021.
Indeed, according to Flare Systems records, we estimate Liberty market to have had about 20,000 active listings, which places Liberty comfortably in the top 10 markets by volume. The Dark Web is the part of the web that’s only accessible through proxy networks, Tor and I2P specifically. You may be surprised that a lot of mainstream organizations have websites on the Tor Network, including Facebook and the BBC. The Tor and I2P networks provide people with an important tool they can use to communicate while keeping their identities private. For instance, journalists who work in parts of the world that are at war have used Tor to do their very important research and activism work.
These websites, accessible only via a browser that ensures anonymity, are used to peddle drugs, guns, hacking services and countless other illicit products. But despite this sizeable setback for the dark web, recent history suggests that successor sites will take their place. Slilpp Market is one of the longest-running darknet markets specialized in banking and account datasets. While UniCC is specialized in datasets for credit cards, Slilpp does the same for bank accounts. Big Blue Market is one of the largest all-purpose markets on the darknet. Not only will you find your typical drug selection but there is also a wide variety of other products such as credit card data, personal ID scans, counterfeit items, jewels and gold, software, carded items and many more.
Following Operation Onymous, there was a substantial increase in PGP support from vendors, with PGP use on two marketplaces near 90%. This suggests that law enforcement responses to cryptomarkets result in continued security innovations, thereby making markets more resilient to undercover law enforcement efforts. Transactions typically use Bitcoin for payment, sometimes combined with tumblers for added anonymity and PGP to secure communications between buyers and vendors from being stored on the site itself. Many sites use Bitcoin multisig transactions to improve security and reduce dependency on the site’s escrow.
Dark Web Gun
A darknet market is a commercial website on the dark web that operates via darknets such as Tor or I2P. In December 2014, a study by Gareth Owen from the University of Portsmouth suggested the second most popular sites on Tor were darknet markets. Dark web markets like WeTheNorth serve as valuable sources of cyber threat intelligence for both private and public sector alike.
