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Hansa Market was open earlier this week and announced that it was planning to ban fentanyl from the site. A Dutch official told the journalist Brian Krebs that the site’s moderators had proposed the ban, and the police, operating undercover, did not oppose the decision. Mr. Cazes had help from about 10 deputies, who administered the site and resolved disputes, the documents said. The 10 were not identified, but authorities said the investigation was continuing. Dark net sites are reached with special browsers that obscure the location and identity of the user and the server, making it hard for officials to locate and shut them down. The site recently come under scrutiny because many of its vendors sell synthetic opioids, like fentanyl, which play a central role in the nationwide overdose epidemic.
AlphaBay mysteriously went offline earlier this month, prompting speculation among its users that authorities had seized the site. It was widely considered the biggest online black market for drugs, estimated to host daily transactions totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. The AlphaBay takedown involved officials from six countries and Europol, led by the American authorities. The Dutch police led the takedown of Hansa Market, but both efforts were coordinated under the code name Operation Bayonet. It was not the first time that the United States and European authorities worked together on online black markets. But all of the defensive wizardry that DeSnake describes—both AlphaGuard and the decentralization project—remain largely unproven talk, says Flashpoint analyst Ian Gray, who closely monitors dark web markets.
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The seizure and civil forfeiture of three former drug houses in Rutland, Vermont is helping to restore a community hit hard by the opioid epidemic. In early July, days before AlphaBay servers were seized, Europol hosted a command post staffed with representatives from the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Department of Justice, along with its own members. The command post was the central hub for information exchange during the AlphaBay operation. So far, AlphaBay has managed to withstand DDoS attacks, criticism, and skepticism and is well positioned to be a safe haven for increasingly displaced marketplace vendors. Platform Platform Overview Learn more about Flashpoint’s products and services.
This operation to seize the AlphaBay site coincides with efforts by Dutch law enforcement to investigate and take down the Hansa Market, another prominent dark web market. Like AlphaBay, Hansa Market was used to facilitate the sale of illegal drugs, toxic chemicals, malware, counterfeit identification documents, and illegal services. The administrators of Hansa Market, along with its thousands of vendors and users, also attempted to mask their identities to avoid prosecution through the use of Tor and digital currency. Further information on the operation against the Hansa Market can be obtained from Dutch authorities.
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Analysis of the results and dissemination of the resultant intelligence is ongoing. Sign up for your risk-free 90-day trial and see how Flashpoint can provide you with the actionable threat intelligence you and your entire team need to identify and respond to threats targeting your organization. When equipped with Flashpoint Intelligence, you have access to collections across illicit online communities ranging from private forums and illicit marketplaces to encrypted chat services channels to gain insight into threat-actor activity on a global scale. The recent law enforcement takedowns will inevitably change behaviors in current markets, temporarily reducing the buying and selling of illicit digital goods.
Announcements motivated by ethical reasons to stop offering the service despite millions of dollars revenue. IMF Chief Christine Lagarde further states the need for crypto market regulation to protect customers and prevent money laundering in an IMF blog post. A word map of the most popular listings on AlphaBay over the course of the last year. Since its 2021 relaunch, AlphaBay explicitly prohibits the sale of fentanyl, firearms, and COVID-19 vaccines, and the targeting of CIS states.
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Some have been busted by law enforcement, like Dark Market, which was the target of a Europol-led takedown operation early last year; or Hydra, the massive Russian-language drug and money-laundering market whose servers were seized in a law enforcement raid in April. Others, like Dark0de and World Market, are believed to have pulled “exit scams,” disappearing suddenly with their users’ money. Still others, like Cannazon and White House Market, staged more considerate and organized exits, giving users time to pull out any funds held on the sites. Although facilitators of those sales were taken down, the market for data still exists. We will still see the buying and selling of credit cards, databases, entertainment accounts, and other data. The demand will also continue to lead to attacks to acquire this data.
- AlphaBay, the largest so-called dark net market, was taken down in early July at the same time the authorities arrested the reported founder of the site, Alexandre Cazes, a Canadian man who was living in Bangkok.
- By comparison, the Silk Road dark market—the largest such enterprise of its kind before it was shut down in 2013—had approximately 14,000 listings.
- AlphaBay started in 2014 and it became the largest darknet market.
- The drug community is naturally a little bit more skittish than the fraud community, and I think we will see them more openly discuss their intentions for next steps.
In March, for example, U.S. postal inspectors arrested Chukwuemeka “Emeka” Okparaeke, 28, in New Jersey, after a U.S. Postal Service employee tipped them off to a man who regularly deposited a large number of envelopes using latex-dipped gloves. The same day, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police executed search warrants at addresses in Quebec tied to the suspect, including at a mini-warehouse in Montreal and residence in Trois-Rivières, searching for computer equipment, the Montreal Gazette reported. Police said the raids did not result in any arrests; they were intended to gather evidence, as part of a joint investigation with the FBI. AlphaBay admins announced today they’ve plugged a security hole that allowed an attacker to gain access to around 218,000 private user messages. Today, in coordinated press releases, the US Department of Justice and Europol announced the takedown of two Dark Web marketplaces — AlphaBay and Hansa Market.
As of Wednesday, the new AlphaBay website was inaccessible, Flashpoint said. DeSnake claimed they were the victim of distributed denial-of-service attacks from a rival scammer. Whether or not the revamped AlphaBay gains the clout among criminals that its predecessor enjoyed remains to be seen. The person who apparently boasted that AlphaBay is back, who goes by the alias DeSnake, has street credibility among crooks. DeSnake was one of the original moderators of AlphaBay along with Cazes, who committed suicide while imprisoned in Thailand. A spokesperson for the FBI, which announced the arrest of AlphaBay creator Alexandre Cazes to much fanfare in July 2017, did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
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DeSnake claims there have been 15,000 user accounts created, 450 vendors registered, and over 400 listings published as of the time of writing. Operation Bayonet, which would ultimately lead to the shutdown of several prominent marketplaces, began with Dutch police seizing another lesser-known market called Hansa Market. After compromising Hansa, authorities secretly operated the market for almost a month.