dyanz53658614687, Author at The News Max

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

dyanz53658614687 — Sat, 06 Jan 2024 04:04:17 +0000

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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, darkmarket list 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 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 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 dark market url are tracking them down.

An underground in flux

Dream darknet 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 darknet 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 , 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.

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Judge rejects plea deal for darknet child porn purveyor

dyanz53658614687 — Sat, 06 Jan 2024 02:04:15 +0000

COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP) – A federal judge rejected a plea agreement on Wednesday that called for 15 to 21 years in prison for a man authorities described as the world´s largest purveyor of child pornography.

Eric Eoin Marques is entitled to withdraw his guilty plea from last year if the judge departs from the sentencing range prosecutors and defense attorneys recommended.

But U.S.

District Judge Theodore Chuang isn’t bound by the terms of the Justice Department´s plea deal.

“It’s too flawed, and I also don’t agree with the outcome,” Chuang said.

The judge said he’s inclined to give Marques a longer sentence for operating a web hosting service that enabled users to anonymously access millions of illicit images and videos, many depicting the rape and torture of infants and dark web darknet market links toddlers.

The judge criticized a provision of the plea deal that wouldn’t give Marques credit for six years he spent in custody in Ireland while fighting extradition after his 2013 arrest in Dublin. Chuang said he can’t tell the federal Bureau of Prisons to refrain from counting those years when Marques likely is entitled to get credit for that time.

The judge said he isn’t prepared to impose a sentence of 15 to 21 years if Marques does get credit for those six years.

“I want a sentence higher than that,” Chuang added.

“It’s not going to be 21 minus 6 to 15. That’s not going to happen. I don’t have to follow what you all did. It’s clear neither of you really understood what you were doing.”

Chuang also expressed frustration that prosecutors and defense lawyers still couldn’t agree on certain facts of the case even after spelling them out in writing as part of the deal.

“I certainly think the process was such that I shouldn’t defer to the parties’ agreement when I’m not sure they really thought it out that carefully,” he said.

Defense attorney Brendan Hurson told the judge that his remarks give them a “platform to negotiate further.”

“If we can’t get somewhere, then we would ask for some time to set a trial date,” Hurson said.

Chuang instructed the attorneys to provide him with a status report by June 25.

Marques, a 35-year-old dual citizen of the U.S.

and Ireland, was extradited to Maryland in March 2019, dark darknet market list and pleaded guilty in February 2020 to conspiracy to advertise child pornography. He faced a mandatory minimum of 15 years and a maximum of 30 years in prison before the plea deal.

Marques created and operated a free, anonymous web hosting service, called “Freedom Hosting,” on the darknet market between 2008 and 2013.

The darknet market is part of the internet but hosted within an encrypted network. It is accessible only through anonymity-providing tools, such as the Tor browser, and allows users to access websites without revealing their IP addresses.

Marques´ attorneys have questioned how federal investigators were able to pierce the Tor network´s anonymity and trace the IP address of the server to a web hosting company in Roubaix, France.

“This anonymity is notoriously difficult for government investigators to penetrate,” they wrote.

Defense attorneys said they received an initial answer to that question when the government revealed “vague details” of how they discovered the IP address and location of the server.
“It appears that this disclosure was delayed, in part, because the investigative techniques employed were, until recently, classified,” they wrote in December 2019.

Investigators found what appeared to be more than 8.5 million images and videos of child pornography on the Freedom Hosting server, including nearly 2 million images that were new to authorities, according to a court filing that accompanied Marques’ guilty plea.

Marques was living in Ireland at the time of the offenses.

He used the encrypted server in France to host more than 200 websites that site administrators and users used to upload and download child pornography.

In 2013, FBI agents in Maryland connected to the network and accessed a child pornography bulletin board with more than 7,700 members and more than 22,000 posts.
Agents downloaded more than 1 million files from another website on the network, nearly all of which depicted sexually explicit images of children.

In July 2013, Irish authorities searched Marques’ home and dark market list vehicle and detained him. When investigators entered his home, Marques moved toward his computer but was subdued before he could turn it off, authorities said.

After his release from custody, Marques purchased a new laptop and logged into his server to lock out the FBI and other law enforcement, the filing says.

Authorities seized nearly $155,000 in U.S.

currency from Marques. During an August 2013 extradition hearing, Marques said his business had been “very successful” and profitable.

In an April 28 court filing, a prosecutor said a government witness was prepared to testify at Wednesday’s sentencing hearing that law enforcement had identified Marques as the largest purveyor of child pornography in the world and that he made approximately $3.6 million in U.S.

currency from his servers.

___

This version corrects that the judge set a June 25 deadline for a status report from attorneys, not a status conference for that date.

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Massive dark web bust seizes $6.5 million from 179 alleged drug dealers

dyanz53658614687 — Sat, 06 Jan 2024 00:04:16 +0000

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The US Justice Department announced the largest dark web bust it has ever helped carry out, seizing more than 1,100 pounds of drugs from 179 alleged online dealers around the world. The US worked with police in Europe to carry out the investigation, seizing more than $6.5 million in cash and virtual currencies.

Operation DisrupTor — named after the frequently used to access the Dark Web Market web — was led by police in Germany, along with US law enforcement agencies and darknet market markets onion Europol.

The majority of the arrests took place in the US with 121 cases, followed by 42 cases in Germany, eight cases in the Netherlands, four cases in the United Kingdom, darknet market markets links three cases in Austria and one case in Sweden. Police said investigations are still ongoing to identify people behind these dark web accounts.

The for hidden parts of the internet that you can’t easily discover through an online darknet market marketplaces have grown in popularity at an alarming rate and allow drug traffickers to openly advertise and take orders from anywhere in the world,” Rosen said. “The dark net invites criminals into our homes and darknet market provides unlimited access to illegal commerce.”

Operation DisrupTor used information from another major darknet market raided in April 2019, FBI Director Christopher Wray said. , one of the largest dark web marketplaces online.

Investigators said they’ve tracked down more than 18,000 listed sales to alleged customers in at least 35 states and in several countries around the world. Wray noted that there’s been a spike in opioid-related overdose deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic and that the FBI will continue investigating dark web drug markets.

“Today’s announcement sends a strong message to criminals selling or buying illicit goods on the dark web: the hidden internet is no longer hidden, and your anonymous activity is not anonymous,” Edvardas Sileris, the head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, said in a statement.

The post Massive dark web bust seizes $6.5 million from 179 alleged drug dealers appeared first on The News Max.

The dark web knows too much about me

dyanz53658614687 — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 21:04:13 +0000

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What do Dunkin’ Donuts, Fortnite, dark web sites Sprint and the Dow Jones company all have in common? They’ve all suffered from massive hacks in 2019 alone.

After every data breach, victim data often surfaces on the encrypted “hidden” internet known as the , a network of sites that can only be accessed with . Dark web markets operate like the ecommerce websites we shop on every day, darknet market links but often trade in illicit goods like drugs, weapons and stolen data.