The post Five Undeniable Information About Dark Markets 2024 appeared first on The News Max.
]]>What exactly are darknet markets? In simple terms, they are encrypted websites accessible only through specific software, such as Tor, which allows users to browse the internet anonymously. This anonymity, along with the use of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin to conduct transactions, provides a shield for both buyers and sellers.
The allure of darknet markets lies in their ability to facilitate transactions that would otherwise be illegal or difficult to obtain in the real world. While it is true that many individuals use these platforms for nefarious purposes, it is essential to acknowledge that not all listings and trades within these markets are illegal. Ethical hackers, for example, may utilize the services available on darknet market markets to test the security of systems with the consent of the owners.
However, the darknet’s reputation is largely shaped by the sales of illegal substances, like drugs, which dominate these marketplaces. The drug trade on darknet markets has undoubtedly become a significant concern for law enforcement agencies worldwide. However, due to the elusive nature of these platforms and the encryption techniques employed, authorities face significant challenges when trying to shut them down.
Despite the hurdles faced by law enforcement, efforts have been made to curb the growth of darknet markets. Several high-profile operations, such as Silk Road and AlphaBay, have been successfully shut down. While this may temporarily disrupt the illicit trade, new marketplaces quickly emerge to take their place.
One of the persistent concerns surrounding darknet market markets is the potential harm they pose to society. The easy accessibility and relative anonymity make these platforms appealing to both seasoned criminals and those with no prior involvement in illegal activities. Additionally, the unregulated sale of drugs and other illicit goods raises public health and safety issues, as the quality and safety of products cannot be guaranteed.
However, it is worth noting that darknet markets url markets do serve a purpose that goes beyond illegal trade. Whistleblowers, journalists, and individuals living under repressive regimes often use these platforms to communicate and share information anonymously, exposing corruption and human rights abuses.
As this hidden realm evolves, calls for regulation and oversight of darknet market markets have grown louder. Proponents argue that a controlled and regulated environment could reduce the risks associated with these platforms, enabling users to access goods and services while minimizing the potential harm to individuals and dark web sites society.
In conclusion, darknet market markets continue to push the boundaries of the internet and pose significant challenges to law enforcement agencies worldwide. While their notoriety often stems from illegal activities, there are legitimate uses for these platforms as well. As society grapples with the complexities of these underground marketplaces, finding a balance between regulating illicit trade and protecting individual privacy remains a pressing challenge.
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]]>The post The largest dark web market for illegal goods is no more appeared first on The News Max.
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Two of the three largest dark web markets are closed for dark web link business.
The Department of Justice and Europol announced Thursday that they have that served hundreds of thousands of customers trying to get their hands on illegal goods online.
While you or I can easily buy groceries, electronics and clothes online, when it comes to finding drugs, weapons and stolen identities, things can get a little more complicated. Merchants of contraband hide out on the dark web, . There, buyers and sellers are anonymous, darkmarket 2024 and so is the currency, with most transactions happening through bitcoin.
AlphaBay alone had 200,000 customers and more than 40,000 sellers peddling illegal goods, making it the largest takedown for a dark web marketplace ever. The website had 100,000 listings for sale when the governments took it down. In comparison, , had 14,000 listings when the FBI shut down the site four years ago. Hansa was the third largest dark web darknet market when it shut down.
“I believe that because of this operation, the American people are safer from the threat of identity fraud and malware, and safer from deadly drugs,” attorney general Jeff Sessions said at a press conference Thursday. He called the bust one of the “most important criminal cases” of the year.
The website made $1 billion in sales before it was shut down in a joint operation of the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, Dutch police and Europol.
“They coordinated a takedown and have punched a big hole in the operating ability of drug traffickers and other serious criminals around the world,” Europol director Rob Wainwright said.
Visitors first noticed AlphaBay was down on July 5, when Alexandre Cazes, dark market list better known as Alpha02, the website’s creator and admin, was arrested in Thailand. On July 12, he was found dead while in custody there, in an apparent suicide. Frequent AlphaBay users were concerned that the shutdown was an “exit scam,” in which a darknet market owner takes the money and runs.
“The operation at AlphaBay was well run and sophisticated, and it struck me as highly unlikely that the darknet market would go down as an exit scam with anything other than calculated precision,” Emily Wilson, the director of analysis at Terbium Labs said, in an email.
Terbium Labs had been following the dark web for months, specifically in marketplaces like AlphaBay. After the fallout in early July, Wilson said former moderators and well-known users were left in confusion.
After AlphaBay’s shutdown, its users flocked to Hansa, increasing the dark market onion darknet market‘s traffic in eightfold, Wainwright said. Dutch police took over Hansa last month and have been collecting thousands of user’s information in an undercover operation.
Wainwright said officers are tracking down Hansa buyers and sellers through their usernames and passwords.
But that’s just one chapter in the fight against illegal online transactions. Just as AlphaBay rose and became 10 times larger than , FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe predicts there will be another dark web darknet market to fill the void.
“There are some criminals that think of cybercrime as a freebie,” McCabe said. “They think they will get away with it because there are too many players and too many countries, they think they will get away with it because the schemes are too complex and because they operate in the shadows.”
: Check out a sample of the stories in CNET’s newsstand edition.
: A crowdsourced science fiction novel written by CNET readers.
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]]>The post Germany shuts down darknet platform specializing in drugs appeared first on The News Max.
]]>Prosecutors in Frankfurt described the “Hydra darknet market” platform as the world’s biggest illegal darknet market marketplace.
They said they seized its server infrastructure in Germany.
The shutdown was the result of investigations underway since August, in which U.S. authorities participated.
The U.S. Treasury Department also announced Tuesday it was sanctioning Hydra as well as a virtual currency exchange, Garantex, that operates out of Russia.
The department said both entities have been used to help finance the activities of ransomware gangs.
The Hydra platform had been active at least since 2015, German prosecutors said. They added that, darknet market lists as well as illegal drugs, forged documents, intercepted data and “digital services” were offered for darknet market markets 2024 sale.
They said that it had about 17 million registered customer accounts and more than 19,000 registered sellers.
Prosecutors said the platform had sales of at least 1.23 billion euros in 2020.
Cybercrime research firm Elliptic said Hydra has facilitated over $5 billion in bitcoin transactions since 2015, dark markets 2024 darknet market list receiving a boost after the closure of a key competitor in 2017.
“Listings on the site also included forged documents, data (such as credit card information) and digital services,” Elliptic said.
“Products were advertised for sale in a number of countries such as Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.”
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]]>The post Gab, the social network used by Pittsburgh shooting suspect, returns appeared first on The News Max.
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, a fringe social network , resurfaced on Sunday.
The social media site, which darknet markets onion itself as a bastion of free speech amid censorship of extremists on Twitter and Facebook, was intermittently available late Sunday. Clicking on links to the site sometimes would produce error messages, but that didn’t seem to stop some of the site’s 800,000 users from posting celebratory messages, dark darknet market 2024 praising the company for coming back online. Many of them hailed the move as for .
“Through the grace of God Gab is back online,” Gab CEO Andrew Torba . “We will never give in. Free speech and liberty will always win.”
Gab’s return marks the latest turn in the unfolding debate over free speech in the modern age. Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube have on bad behavior and dark web darknet market hate speech on their services. That’s driven some of the people banned from those sites to sites like and Gab, a Twitter-like alternative social network founded in 2016.
Last week, Gab came under scrutiny when reports surfaced that Robert Bowers, who is charged with opening fire in , used the social network to voice . Eleven people died .
Two days later, on Oct. 29, domain provider GoDaddy . GoDaddy said it made the decision after receiving complaints and finding content on Gab that “promotes and encourages violence against people.” , Stripe, Joyent, Shopify and Medium also cut ties with Gab.
Gab isn’t the only social network that’s been used by extremists. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube all have been used by terrorists and Neo-Nazis, as well. With varying degrees of success, those platforms have tried to crack down on hate speech. Gab, however, onion dark website darknet markets 2024 itself as a bastion of free speech that is more permissive than other sites, which is part of why it’s attracted extremists.
Gab also isn’t the first site to see its domain register or host pull their services because of its content. Last year, the neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer after being booted by GoDaddy and Google. Gab, for its part, is operating on the surface web for now.
In a , Torba said Gab was able to come back online after , , and should be fully back online Monday. “This coordinate smear by the mainstream media did not work,” he said in the message. “This smear is only going to propel us into the stratosphere.”
: Everything you need to know about the free speech debate.
: Everything you need to know about why tech is under Washington’s microscope.
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]]>The post One of the biggest ever dark web police stings leads to 150 arrests appeared first on The News Max.
]]>The suspects arrested included several high-profile targets, involved in buying or selling illegal goods online, Europol said today.
Operation Dark HunTOR also recovered millions of pounds in cash and , as well as drugs and guns.
The bust stems from a German-led police sting earlier this year taking down the ‘world’s largest’ darknet market marketplace.
Darknet markets are e-commerce sites designed to lie beyond the reach of regular search engines and are popular with criminals, as buyers and sellers are largely untraceable.
Police around the world have arrested 150 suspects in one of the largest-ever dark web sting operations.
The suspects arrested included several high-profile targets, involved in buying or selling illegal goods online, Europol said today (stock image)
Dark HunTOR, ‘was composed of a series of separate but complementary actions in Australia, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, dark web sites the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States,’ the Hague-based Europol said.
In the United States alone, police arrested 65 people, while 47 were held in Germany, 24 in Britain, and four each in Italy and the Netherlands, among others.
A number of those arrested ‘were considered high-value targets’ by Europol.
Law agents also confiscated 26.7 million euros (£22.45million) in cash and virtual currencies, as well as 45 guns and 516lbs of drugs, including 25,000 ecstasy pills.
Italian police also shut down the ‘DeepSea’ and ‘Berlusconi’ marketplaces, ‘which together boasted over 100,000 announcements of illegal products’, said Europol, darknet market markets onion address which coordinated the operation together with its twin judicial agency Eurojust.
German police in January closed down the ‘DarkMarket’ online marketplace, used by its alleged operator, an Australian, to facilitate the sale of drugs, stolen credit card data and malware.
Europol said the arrest of the alleged operator, caught near the German-Danish border at the time, darknet market markets and the seizure of the criminal infrastructure provided ‘investigators across the world with a trove of evidence’.
German prosecutors at the time said DarkMarket came to light in the course of a major investigation against the web-hosting service Cyberbunker, located in a former NATO bunker in southwest Germany.
Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre EC3 has since been compiling intelligence packages to identify the key targets, the continent’s policing agency said.
The secret ‘darknet market‘ includes websites that can be assessed only with specific software or authorisations, ensuring anonymity for users.
Dark HunTOR, ‘was composed of a series of separate but complementary actions in Australia, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States,’ the Hague-based Europol (their HQ pictured) said
They have faced increased pressure from international law enforcement in recent months.
‘The point of operations such as this is to put criminals operating on the dark web on notice (that) the law enforcement community has the means and global partnerships to unmask them and hold them accountable for their illegal activities,’ Europol deputy director of operations Jean-Philippe Lecouffe said.
Rolf van Wegberg, cybercrime investigator at the TU Delft university said the operation signalled a break in the trend of recent police actions against suspected online criminals.
‘This kind of operations in the past looked at arresting the controllers of these marketplaces, we now see police services targeting the top sellers,’ he told investigative journalists at the Dutch KRO-NCRV public broadcaster.
A press conference about the operation has been set for 10am local time (2pm GMT) in Washington with the Department of Justice.
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]]>The post Europol says illegal marketplace "DarkMarket" taken offline appeared first on The News Max.
]]>The dark market list had almost 500,000 users with 2,400 sellers, dark market onion web sites Europol said in a statement.
Transactions conducted on it in cryptocurrency were worth more than 140 million euros ($170 million).
“The vendors on the marketplace mainly traded all kinds of drugs and sold counterfeit money, stolen or counterfeit credit card details, anonymous SIM cards and malware,” Europol said.
Agencies from Australia, Denmark, Moldova, Ukraine, United Kingdom and the United States also took part in the operation, which Europol helped to coordinate.
darknet market markets are e-commerce sites designed to lie beyond the reach of regular search engines.
They are popular with criminals, Darknet Websites as buyers and sellers are largely untraceable. Payments on the DarkMarket were made in bitcoin and monero.
The investigation was led by German prosecutors and darknet market list an Australian citizen who is alleged to be the operator of DarkMarket was arrested near the German-Danish border last weekend, darknet market links Europol said.
More that 20 servers were seized in Moldova and Ukraine.
(Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
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]]>The post U.S. arrests alleged 'Bitcoin Fog' money launderer appeared first on The News Max.
]]>BOSTON, dark market link April 28 (Reuters) – U.S.
officials on Tuesday arrested Roman Sterlingov, the alleged principal operator dark websites of cryptocurrency money laundering website Bitcoin Fog, according to a federal court filing.
Sterlingov, a citizen of Russia and Sweden, was detained in Los Angeles on money-laundering related charges.
Bitcoin Fog, launched in 2011, is one of the original Bitcoin “tumbler” or “mixer” services designed to help users anonymize cryptocurrencies payments, especially on so-called darknet market lists online markets that trafficked in drugs and other illegal products, according to a legal statement accompanying the criminal complaint by Internal Revenue Service special agent Devon Beckett.
“Analysis of bitcoin transactions, financial records, Internet service provider records, email records and additional investigative information, identifies Roman Sterlingov as the principal operator of Bitcoin Fog,” Beckett wrote.
More than 1.2 million Bitcoin (BTC) — worth approximately $336 million at the time of the transactions — were sent through Bitcoin Fog, according to the Beckett statement.
A spokesperson for tor drug darknet market the U.S.
Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, which is handling the case, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Requests sent to email addresses tied to Sterlingov were not immediately returned. (Reporting by Lawrence Delevingne; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
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]]>The post Child porn purveyor to get 21-27 years under new plea deal appeared first on The News Max.
]]>The deal between Eric Eoin Marques and Justice Department prosecutors is designed to satisfy a judge in Maryland who rejected their original agreement, which called for a prison sentence of 15 to 21 years.
Defense attorneys outlined the new terms in a court filing on Friday.
They said a 21-year prison sentence would be “fair and just” for Marques.
Marques’ lawyers also urged U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang to impose a condition of supervised release that would allow Marques to live in Ireland, darknet markets url his home nation, after he completes his prison sentence.
Marques, who was 35 in May, is scheduled to enter his updated plea agreement and be sentenced next week.
Chuang isn´t bound by the sentencing recommendation.
During a hearing in May, Chuang described the initial plea agreement as “too flawed” and dark markets said he was inclined to give Marques a longer sentence than 15 to 21 years. 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.
“It´s not going to be 21 minus 6 to 15. That´s not going to happen,” the judge said.
The new plea deal calls for Marques to receive credit for the time served.
Marques, a dual citizen of the U.S.
and Ireland, pleaded guilty in February 2020 to creating and operating a web hosting service called “Freedom Hosting” on the darknet market between 2008 and 2013.
The darknet market lists is part of the internet but hosted within an encrypted network. It is accessible only through anonymity-providing tools.
Marques’ service enabled users to anonymously access millions of illicit images and videos, many depicting the rape and torture of infants and toddlers.
Investigators found what appeared to be more than 8.5 million images and videos of child pornography on the Freedom Hosting server, according to a court filing that accompanied Marques´ guilty plea.
Marques was living in Ireland at the time of the offenses.
He was extradited to Maryland in March 2019. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to advertise child pornography.
In an April court filing, a prosecutor said a government witness was prepared to testify that investigators had identified Marques as the largest purveyor of child pornography in the world and that he had made approximately $3.6 million in U.S.
currency from his servers.
Marques’ lawyers say he made money from his legitimate web-hosting services, not Freedom Hosting.
“Though the contents of many of the websites it hosted were despicable and unlawful, the evidence shows that Freedom Hosting was a free service until just before Mr. Marques´ arrest,” they wrote in Friday’s filing.
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