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In August 2020, it suffered an “exit scam,” meaning one or more administrators closed up shop, leaving with all of the cryptocurrency being held in escrow by the site, making them at least several million dollars richer. “I want to dedicate this to alpha02 first and foremost we promised each other to go to the bitter end, here I am keeping my end of the deal.” 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. While DarkOwl generally avoids engaging in or commenting on speculative darknet drama, there are several things about the re-emergence of AlphaBay and DeSnake that don’t add up. While DeSnake very well could be legitimate, the sheer fact the authorities confiscated the market’s servers and Cazes’s unencrypted laptop should bring significant suspicion whether this new darknet marketplace is legitimate, or simply another covert law enforcement operation.
In July 2017 AlphaBay has suddenly gone offline and it was suspected as an exit scam, however, a few days after it has gone offline, it was revealed that AlphaBay has been seized and alpha02 aka Alexander Cazes was caught. AlphaBay is a principle-driven, vision oriented and community centered marketplace and Forum for all black market items. It boasts of mature management, unparalleled security, 24/7 professional & well-trained Staff.
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He also acted as a “scam watcher” monitoring the marketplace for attempts to defraud users. I’m very curious to see over the coming days and weeks how users react to the news. 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. The question now remains whether or not the vendors who were trading in non-drug related goods move on to the remaining major markets or if we begin to see a major fraud-related (not just carding-related) market take shape. AlphaBay’s Monero-only policy does not seem to have deterred or hindered buyers and vendors from operating in the marketplace, which most popularly boasts drug offerings.
- ScamWatch will continue to have the same functions guarding users from scams, catching scams in their tracks, ensuring listings are truthful and vendors stick to their refund policies, review reports and relay important information to Staff etc.
- Silk Road was shut down in 2013 after the arrest of its unassuming founder, Ross William Ulbricht.
- The Dutch National Police took control of Hansa on 20 June, seizing servers in Lithuania, the Netherlands and Germany.
- The products that are most commonly listed for sale include drugs, fake documents, fraud-related items, and hacking services and tools.
- Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Georgia identified an AlphaBay staffer living in the United States.
He did not deserve that, I knew him and he really was a nice, bright guy who was genuine about the community and people regardless of what he did. Silk Road was shut down in 2013 after the arrest of its unassuming founder, Ross William Ulbricht. The FBI seized bitcoins (worth about $33.6 million, at the time) from the site, which were later sold in a series of auctions by the United States Marshals Service . Also unlike Silk Road, there is no indication that the law enforcement took down the AlphaBay marketplace. Although the website sometimes goes down for maintenance, customers are speculating that the admins have stolen all their Bitcoins for good measure, when heard no words from the site’s admins on the downtime. AlphaBay, also known as “the new Silk Road,” has been shut down since Tuesday night.
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When AlphaBay first reappeared, Gray and other dark web analysts and users expressed suspicion that DeSnake might be compromised by law enforcement. As part of the site’s relaunch, multiple new features have been advertised and new rules announced. Notable among new features are AlphaGuard , an automatic system to resolve disputes between buyers and sellers, exclusive use of Monero wallets, and the offering of I2P mirrors. Concerning rules, items newly prohibited from sale include COVID-19 vaccines, firearms, products containing the narcotic fentanyl, pornography, and “hitman services”. Furthermore, there is a ban on discussions of any public or private information related to the governments, organizations, or people of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan. This has led to loose speculation that there is a connection between the site operators and the governments of these nations.
The servers contained multiple constantly open hot cryptocurrency wallets. When Cazes was arrested, he was logged into his laptop performing an administrative reboot on an AlphaBay server in direct response to a law-enforcement-created artificial system failure; furthermore, encryption was wholly absent on that laptop. U-47700, a synthetic opioid, revealed that the drugs were purchased on AlphaBay from Khelborod and Barrero.
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The sites operated on the Tor network, which helps users browse the internet anonymously. Visitors to the online marketplaces paid through digital currencies such as Bitcoin. Much like Silk Road, AlphaBay was hosted on the dark web, and facilitated the sale and purchase of illegal goods, mostly drugs and hacking tools.
The products that are most commonly listed for sale include drugs, fake documents, fraud-related items, and hacking services and tools. The prices for these products range from a few dollars to hundreds and thousands of dollars, depending on how valuable the stolen or illegal product is and on how experienced and known the vendor and platform are. When AlphaBay became inaccessible as a result, thousands of its buyers and vendors flocked to the then law enforcement-ran Hansa market to continue their operations. Dutch police, operating servers across the Netherlands, Lithuania, and Germany, capitalized on the eight-fold surge of users visiting the market in the weeks following.
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The encrypted-email company, popular with security-conscious users, has a plan to go mainstream. DeSnake tells WIRED, however, that he’s developed a few forms of protection that give him confidence he’ll continue to stay a step ahead of the feds. Perhaps most importantly, he claims to be based in a former Soviet country that has no extradition treaty with the US. His choice for AlphaBay to use only Monero, rather than Bitcoin, may make the sort of blockchain analysis that contributed to the original site’s takedown far more difficult.