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 darknet market websites 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 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

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 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 dark websites 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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Washington has announced sanctions against a cryptocurrency exchange it says has worked with ransomware attackers

The United States imposed sanctions Tuesday on cryptocurrency exchange SUEX for its ties to ransomware extortionists, as Washington seeks to crack down on a sharp rise in digital crime attacks.

The move marks the first US sanctions against a virtual currency exchange and they come as President Joe Biden’s administration has been under pressure to act after high-profile hacks and data breaches.

The attacks on a major US oil pipeline, dark market a meatpacking company and darkmarket Microsoft Exchange email system caused real-world problems and drew attention to the vulnerability to US infrastructure to digital pirates.

The US Treasury Department, which announced the sanctions, did not say if SUEX was implicated in any of those incidents, but noted that 40 percent of the exchange’s known transaction history was linked to “illicit actors.”

“Some virtual currency exchanges are exploited by malicious actors, but others, as is the case with SUEX, facilitate illicit activities for their own illicit gains,” a Treasury statement said, adding they are the first sanctions against a crypto exchange.

As a result of the sanctions, any assets of the platform under US jurisdiction are now blocked and Americans are barred from using SUEX.

– $10 million reward –

Crypto experts from Chainalysis noted large sums had moved through the platform, much of it from suspect sources.

“In Bitcoin alone, SUEX’s deposit addresses hosted at large exchanges have received over $160 million from ransomware actors, scammers and darknet markets 2023 darknet market operators,” said a report from Chainalysis, which provides data on cryptocurrency.

SUEX is registered in the Czech Republic, and has branches in Russia and dark web sites the Middle East.

Chainalysis said the US designation is important because it “represents significant action” by Washington to combat the money laundering that is key to digital crime.

The United States also issued a fresh warning against companies and dark market onion individuals paying ransoms to unlock their files seized by ransomware hackers.

It noted that Americans could face penalties themselves if they are involved in making ransom payments as the United States already has a blacklist of people and countries, some of which are linked to ransomware attacks.

Tuesday’s announcement comes after Washington in July offered $10 million rewards for information on online extortionists abroad as it stepped up efforts to halt a sharp rise in ransomware attacks.

This year has seen a slew of prominent ransomware attacks which have disrupted a US pipeline, darknet market markets 2023 a meat processor and the software firm Kaseya — affecting 1,500 businesses, many of them far from the limelight.

Some $350 million was paid to malicious cyber actors last year, a spike of 300 percent from 2019, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

US officials say many of the attacks originate in Russia although they have debated to what extent there is state involvement.

Russia denies responsibility.

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Frankfurt prosecutors said in a statement together with the Federal Criminal Police Office that in mid-April three German suspects, said to be the administrators of the ‘Boystown’ platform, were arrested along with a German user.

One of the three main suspects was arrested in Paraguay.

They also searched seven buildings in connection with the porn ring in mid-April in Germany.

The authorities said the platform was ‘one of the world’s biggest child pornography darknet market platforms’ and had been active at least since 2019.

Pedophiles used it to exchange and watch pornography of children and toddlers, most of them boys, from all over the world.

Prosecutors wrote that they found ‘images of most severe sexual abuse of toddlers among the photos and video material.

A German police task force investigated the platform, its administrators and darknet market lists users for months in cooperation with Europol and law enforcement authorities from the Netherlands, dark market 2023 Sweden, Australia, the United States and Canada, the statement said.

The three main suspects were a 40-year-old man from Paderborn, a 49-year-old man from Munich and a 58-year-old man from northern Germany who had been living in Paraguay for many years, the prosecutors’ statement said.

They worked as administrators of the site and gave advice to members on how to evade law enforcement when using the platform for illegal child pornography.

A fourth suspect, a 64-year-old man from Hamburg, is accused of being one of the most active users of the platform having allegedly uploaded more than 3500 posts.

Germany has requested the extradition of the suspect who was arrested in Paraguay.

After the raids in mid-April, darkmarket list the online platform was shut down.

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Adrian V., 28, a computer technician and dark markets 2023 darknet market onion 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 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, darknet marketplace 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 best darknet markets 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, darknet market lists 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., darknet markets 2023 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.  

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, 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. 

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.

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The couple’s lawyer, Samson Enzer, has urged a judge to allow them to be freed on $3million and $4.5million bail respectively, saying the fact neither of them fled when given the chance upon first being alerted to the investigation, proves they would not run from the law if now freed on bail.  

Prosecutors are urging caution: It is believed the couple still have vast sums of money at their disposal which is likely hidden from authorities. 

Furthermore, Lichtenstein has dual citizenship with giving the couple a possible safe haven from which it would be particularly difficult for U.S. authorities to secure an extradition order should the couple choose to flee.

The pair, dubbed ‘Bitcoin Bonnie and Crypto Clyde’ by financial newsletter Morning Brew, were both arrested on Tuesday on federal charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States for allegedly laundering $4.5billion in  stolen in the 2016 Bitfinex exchange hack. 

If convicted, they face up to a maximum of 25 years in prison.    

Prosecutors argued that the pair, who live on Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, should be denied bail, calling them flight risks who still potentially have access to vast sums of money. 

Lichtenstein, is a dual US-Russian national from Illinois, while Morgan hails from California.

The couple’s lawyer claims the couple want to start a family and would not run away from her fertilized eggs. 

‘Morgan previously froze several of her embryos at a hospital in New York in anticipation of starting a family together, as she can only conceive through in vitro fertilization because she suffers from endometriosis,’ the couple’s lawyer Samson Enzer wrote in a filing.

‘The couple would never flee from the country at the risk of losing access to their ability to have children, which they were discussing having this year until their lives were disrupted by their arrests in this case,’ Enzer explained.    

Federal law enforcement officials said they have recovered roughly $3.6 billon in cryptocurrency – the Justice Department’s largest ever financial seizure – linked to the hack of Bitfinex, dark web markets darknet market 2023 a virtual currency exchange based in Hong Kong, whose systems were breached nearly six years ago. 

Enzer also attempted to explain how well behaved his clients had been since they were alerted of the investigation into them.

‘Both stayed put in their residence in lower Manhattan … even after the government’s investigation targeting them in this case’ several months ago.    

The court filing comes just days before the couple’s next scheduled bail hearing in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on Monday. 

Judge Beryl Howell will then make a determination on what is best for the pair while they await trial. 

On Thursday, Judge Howell ordered the pair to be brought to Washington for next week’s hearing.   

Enzer pleaded with Judge Howell for her to stick with the agreements already made with Manhattan federal court Judge Debra Freeman.

Freeman had set bond at $5 million for Lichtenstein and $3 million for Morgan together with added conditions of home incarceration and location-monitoring devices.

But the bail ruling was ultimately blocked after Judge Freeman took notice of prosecudark web sites of convoluted blockchain-and cryptocurrency-tracing assertions,’ he added. 

Enzer also stressed that the couple needed to be kept out of jail in order to prepare a defense for their trial and noted how Morgan suffers from various medical conditions including surgery to remove a lump in her breast and ‘pre-existing lung damage from a prior bout of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS,’ which put her at increase risk for catching covid. 

Earlier this week, the Justice Department shared more information as to the progress with the investigation. 

It revealed on Tuesday that more than $3.6 billion worth of bitcoin linked the 2016 hack has been seized having allegedly been in crypto wallets controlled by the couple.

When the breach occurred, 120,000 bitcoins were allegedly transferred into a crypto wallet that Lichtenstein still had access to last month.

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