First Silk Road. Now AlphaBay. What’s next for the dark web?

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A government shutdown of dark web marketplaces AlphaBay and Hansa has merchants and consumers looking for a new home.

Authorities , the largest online marketplace for illegal goods, on July 4, and took down Hansa, the third largest, on Thursday. The sites, where people could buy drugs, guns and child pornography, had flourished since 2014, when a predecessor, Silk Road, was shut down. 

Fueled by Tor browsers and cryptocurrencies that offer anonymity, AlphaBay, Hansa and other sites avoided much government detection, allowing  in the wake of Silk Road’s demise. AlphaBay replaced as the biggest, growing to be 10 times larger. 

When one dark darknet market falls, buyers and sellers just move on to the next one.

The migration of buyers and sellers comes as authorities around the world crack down on digital marketplaces that cater to growing numbers of shadowy sales. at the time it was taken offline. By comparison, Silk Road had just 14,000 when the Federal Bureau of Investigation closed it four years ago.

Many of the sites . A recent study by the University of Manchester and think tank Rand Europe found 811 arms-related listings on . The researchers found nearly 60% of the weapons came from the US and most of the sales were headed to Europe. Worryingly, one gun bought on a cryptomarket was used in a .

FBI deputy director darknet market links Andrew McCabe acknowledged shutting down such markets was like playing whack-a-mole. His agency would likely have to in the future, he said.

“Critics will say as we shutter one site, another will emerge,” McCabe said at a press conference. “But that is the nature of criminal work. It never goes away, you have to constantly keep at it, and you have to use every tool in your toolbox.”

One such tool: using a captured marketplace as a trap.

After the fall of AlphaBay, Dutch police said they saw traffic heading to Hansa spike eight-fold. That was something the cops were anticipating. 

Dutch police had full control of Hansa on June 20, but waited a month before shutting it down hoping to catch the new users in marketplace chaos.

“We could identify and disrupt the regular criminal activity that was happening on Hansa market but also sweep up all of those new users that were displaced from AlphaBay and looking for a new trading platform for their criminal activities,” Rob Wainwright, the Europol director, said at the press conference.

Dutch police now have the usernames, passwords and IP addresses of thousands of Hansa users, and are tracking them down.

An underground in flux

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Dream Market seemed to be the next move for dark web vendors, but some question how reliable it is.


McAfee

The ploy has dark web market users on edge. Many are concerned about whether the next available platform will be compromised as well. That has them questioning Dream darknet market, a marketplace that’s been in business since 2013 and benefitted from the shutdown of rivals. 

“After the closure of the AlphaBay darknet market, many vendors expressed that they were moving their operations to Hansa and Dream Market,” Liv Rowley, an analyst at Flashpoint, said. “The shuttering of Hansa now leaves Dream the only remaining major option.”

Rowley noticed chatter on forums and subreddits pointing to Dream Market as the next AlphaBay, but people are wary after the Dutch police ploy.

Reddit users on several  threads have expressed concerns the website has been compromised in a similar fashion. A user who speculated Hansa had been compromised in a thread posted  returned on Thursday to warn that .

“This is a warning you will want to heed,” the user, who goes by , dark markets 2024 posted. “They are waiting to gather as many refugees from AB & Hansa as they can and then drop the hammer.”

Other marketplaces, like Tochka and Valhalla, could also rise in the vacuum AlphaBay and Hansa have left. Some smaller dark web markets are even appealing to those lost in AlphaBay’s shake-up. 

Security company was offering vendors from AlphaBay a discount if they moved to their platform.

“The entire illegal underground is in flux right now,” Flashpoint’s Rowley said.

It’ll be quiet on the dark web until people can find a reliable marketplace again, but eventually they will, said Emily Wilson, the director of analysis at Terbium Labs.

She called the busts a “sizable hiccup” but not “an irreversible blow.” 

It’s unclear who’ll emerge from the fallout. But the FBI estimates that more than 40,000 merchants are looking for a place to sell. And there are more than 200,000 customers looking for places to buy stuff they can’t get on Amazon. 

With AlphaBay, the Amazon of illegal goods, now shut down, the market is fragmenting. If you want malware, there’s a darknet market for that on the dark web. The same for guns and for drugs. So business will go on, albeit less conveniently.

“For now, there are plenty of smaller and more specialized markets for vendors and buyers to continue trading,” Wilson said. 

First published July 21, 8 a.m. ET

Update, 5:04 p.m.: Adds background on scope of the markets, weapons sales. 

: Online abuse is as old as the internet and it’s only getting worse. It exacts a very real toll.

: CNET chronicles tech’s role in providing new kinds of accessibility.

Most weapons on the dark web come from US, study finds

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US guns make up as much as 60 percent of the weapons on sale on the dark web, dark darknet market url new research has found.

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Weapons, darkmarket 2024 drugs and stolen identities are readily available on the dark web market urls web, a . To investigate where guns, ammunition and guides to their use come from, the UK’s University of Manchester and think tank Rand Europe — or cryptomarkets — and found 811 listings relevant to the study, published Wednesday.

Most weapons were from the USA, where , and most sales were destined for Europe. A gun bought from the dark websites web was used in a .

“The dark web is both an enabler for the trade of illegal weapons already on the black darknet market and a potential source of diversion for weapons legally owned”, darknet market magazine said Giacomo Persi Paoli, the report’s lead author. “The ability for criminals and terrorists, as well as vulnerable or fixated individuals, to make virtually anonymous purchases is perhaps the most dangerous aspect.”

On Thursday, US and European law enforcement agencies the , two of the three largest dark web markets. 

Four paedophiles jailed in Germany for raping boys in garden shed

Posted on by reggie3918

Adrian V., 28, a computer technician and the ringleader, led the sexual abuse from a shed belonging to his mother - who fetched the men breakfast as they assaulted the victims

Adrian V., 28, a computer technician and the ringleader, led the sexual abuse from a shed belonging to his mother – who fetched the men breakfast as they assaulted the victims

Four paedophiles have been jailed in for raping boys after luring them to a shed where they drugged them and abused them for dark markets 2024 days.

Adrian V., 28, a computer technician and the ringleader, led the sexual abuse in a shed belonging to his mother – who fetched the men breakfast as they assaulted the victims.

Along with three other men, Adrian V.

was found to have trapped boys in the garden shed from April 2020, where the victims were drugged and raped over the course of three days.

One of the victims, now 11 years old, was the son of his girlfriend.

Prosecutors presented some 30 hours of video evidence, much of which had been shared in darknet market forums.
The other men are believed to have met Adrian V. online. 

They are Marco Sch., 35, an IT expert from Hanover; Tobias Sch., 30, a craftsman from Hesse; and Enrico L., 42, a care provider from Brandenburg. Germany’s privacy laws mean that surnames are not disclosed.

The chief defendant’s mother Carina V., 45, was found to have been aware of the abuse.

The court heard that she had brought the men breakfast while they took turns assaulting the children.  

The chief defendant's mother Carina V., 45, was found to have been aware of the abuse. The court heard that she had brought the men breakfast while they took turns assaulting the children in her garden shed in Munster

The chief defendant’s mother Carina V., 45, darknet market markets onion address was found to have been aware of the abuse.

The court heard that she had brought the men breakfast while they took turns assaulting the children in her garden shed in Munster

Adrian V.'s computer rig where he had downloaded more than 500 terabytes of child porn at his mother's house

Adrian V.’s computer rig where he had downloaded more than 500 terabytes of child porn at his mother’s house

Police officers walk past the garden shed where boys were abused by Adrian V. and the three other men in April last year

Police officers walk past the garden shed where boys were abused by Adrian V.

and the three other men in April last year

Adrian V., flanked by his lawyers, holds a folder up to hide his face at the court in Munster on Tuesday

Adrian V., flanked by his lawyers, dark market 2024 holds a folder up to hide his face at the court in Munster on Tuesday

Presiding judge Matthias Pheiler expressed shock at the ‘horrific events’ covered in the trial, calling the video recordings ‘deeply disturbing’.

‘The proceedings also clearly showed how paedophiles operate: they trick, they lie, onion dark website they manipulate those around’ the victims, he said, adding that he was repulsed to see that the defendants ‘grinned’ and even ‘laughed loudly’ while evidence against them was presented.

Pheiler said he was relieved none of the victims had had to testify in the trial. 

Adrian V., from Münster, was jailed for 14 years. The other three men were jailed for between 10 and 12 years.

The mother, Carina V., was jailed for five years for aiding and abetting. 

Police are still screening evidence uncovered from the abuse in the shed and have used it to identify suspects across Germany and abroad. 

The main defendant Adrian V. holds a folder in front of his face next to his lawyer at the Regional Court in Munster today

The main defendant Adrian V.

holds a folder in front of his face next to his lawyer at the Regional Court in Munster today

The ringleader Adrian V. is said to have 'grinned' throughout the trial

The ringleader Adrian V.

is said to have ‘grinned’ throughout the trial

Five men have already been convicted and sentenced in connection with the case and investigators have identified 50 suspects, of whom around 30 are in custody.

The current trial began last November and the sentences were broadly in line with what prosecutors had demanded.

It is just one of a series of gruesome child abuse cases to rock the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia over the last year, prompting a tightening of legislation.

In June 2020, investigators said they were probing some 30,000 suspects as part of an investigation into a large online paedophile network linked to the city of Bergisch Gladbach.

In an earlier scandal in Luegde, 80 miles from Munster, several men abused children hundreds of times at a campsite over a number of years.

In response to the series of cases, the German parliament in March agreed tougher punishments for using and sharing child pornography.

The law also gives police and prosecutors broader powers to monitor online communication of suspects.