Our analysts will continue to follow this market’s presence and reputation on the darknet, and provide further updates as this story unfolds. DarkOwl could not confirm any prior darknet experience from the moderators DeSnake has installed as Staff on the market and forum. DarkOwl has been unable to assess how the larger darknet community feels about the new Alphabay Market. AlphaBay historically had a vocal and persistence presence on Darknet Market Avengers forum which unfortunately, has been offline for several weeks.
AlphaGuard is a very well tested system which ensures even if seizures happen on all servers, users will be able to withdraw their funds, settle disputes and leave without a cent lost. The system has been in development for 2 years with countless tests and has had a standalone testing period of 1 year+ where it ran on its own. AlphaGuard is quite advanced piece of code which can run even without having access to any servers provided by Administration. Alphabay Market has originally been operating from 2014 to 2017 with alpha02 and DeSnake as admins and was the biggest darknet market in history.
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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. And he claims to have built complex technical protections that include redundant infrastructure in multiple countries, along with a system called AlphaGuard that’s designed to automatically relaunch the site on new servers in the case of a bust. “We will be back and running within a few days and without a cent lost,” DeSnake says. 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.
- 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.
- “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.”
- An average of 14,456.7 substance listings were identified across sampled days from 868.7 unique sellers.
- A week later, Cazes apparently took his own life while in custody in Thailand.
We characterize drug cryptomarkets as ‘anonymous open’ marketplaces that allow the diffusion of drugs across locales. Where cryptomarket customers make stock-sourcing purchases for offline distribution, the cryptomarket may indirectly serve drug users who are not themselves cryptomarket customers, thereby increasing the drug diffusing capacity of these marketplaces. Our research aimed to identify wholesale activity on the first major cryptomarket, Silk Road 1. Illicit drugs are increasingly sold on cryptomarkets and on social media.
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A judge in Atlanta, Georgia, has sentenced Aaron James Glende, a hacker known as IcyEagle, to four years and two months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for selling access to stolen bank accounts and others, via the AlphaBay Dark Web marketplace. The Internet’s largest Dark Web marketplace AlphaBay announced upcoming support for Ethereum, the cryptocurrency that recently is giving Bitcoin a running for today’s most popular digital currency. AlphaBay, an online marketplace that sold illegal products on the Dark Web, has been taken offline following raids in three countries, according to several reports. Other listings – such as doxxing tools, gold, invites to invite-only Genesis marketplace, Binance accounts, password databases, and more. These marketplaces are a part of a long list of active markets that are gaining momentum, audiences, and illegal activity every day. We tried to represent the wide range of marketplaces that exist within this list.
It was not the first time that the United States and European authorities worked together on online black markets. When dark net markets are shut, their users typically move quickly to new markets. But on Thursday, news of the joint operation sent the community into a panic.
Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California filed a civil forfeiture complaint against Alexandre Cazes and his wife’s assets located throughout the world, including in Thailand, Cyprus, Lichtenstein, and Antigua & Barbuda. Cazes and his wife amassed numerous high value assets, including luxury vehicles, residences and a hotel in Thailand. Cazes also possessed millions of dollars in cryptocurrency, which has been seized by the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration . Cazes used a pseudonym, Alpha02, to run the site which he had previously used (e.g., in carding and tech forums) since at least 2008, and variously advertised this identity as the “designer”, “administrator” and “owner” of the site. In April 2016, AlphaBay’s API was compromised, leading to 13,000 messages being stolen.
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As with other markets and forums, AlphaBay advertised there will be no ransomware selling or recruiting on the market; and it is forbidden to sell or compromise the data of citizens from Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan. Some users commented that the new marketplace is a law enforcement operation, looking to trap and identify illegal vendors. Cryptomarkets, or illegal anonymizing online platforms that facilitate drug trade, have been analyzed in a rapidly growing body of research.
Online drug trade networks might still be heavily shaped by offline constraints, despite their ability to provide access for end-users to large international supply. Cryptomarkets might be more “localized” and less international than thought before. We discuss potential explanations for such geographical clustering and implications of the findings.
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AlphaGuard which protects wallets of both buyers and vendors in case of police raids on all servers by giving them opportunity to finish escrows, disputes and withdraw funds. On 7th August 2021 DeSnake re-opened AlphaBay for business after having his identity verified by PGP, forum admins, ex-AlphaBay staff members and multiple security researchers. Ironically, some of the services that can be bought and sold on the AlphaBay Market include spam sending services, “bank drops” , account details, and other services useful to fraudsters engaged in phishing.
The analysis of the flow of goods between countries emphasises the role of specific countries in the international and domestic trafficking, potentially informing law enforcement agencies to target domestic mails or international posts from specific countries. The research also highlights the large proportion of licit and illicit drug listings and vendors on Evolution, followed by various fraud issues , the sharing of knowledge and finally goods, currencies and precious metals . Looking at the shipping country, there seems to be a clear division between digital and physical products, with more specific information for physical goods. This reveals that the spatial analysis of trafficking is particularly meaningful in the case of physical products and to a lesser extent for digital products. Finally, the geographical analysis reveals that spatial patterns on Evolution tend to reflect the structure of the traditional illicit market.
In the spring of 2017, the Alpha Organization paid an extortionist threatening to dox alpha02 and a couple of his moderators at least $45,000 USD, although the veracity of the information the extortionist had has not been verified. When authorities carried out the warrant and arrest in his apartment in Bangkok, his laptop was left unencrypted and the admin account for the market and server logged in. Authorities also simultaneously executed search warrants for the market’s server hardware located in Quebec, Canada. In cooperation with the FBI, the Royal Thai Police took steps to organize the extradition of the 24-year old Canadian administrator back to the United States. However, after Cazes was held for exactly a week at the Narcotics Suppression Bureau in Bangkok, reports of his apparent suicide surfaced. Bangkok vowed to conduct an autopsy, while US authorities had no interest in verifying the legitimacy of the suspect’s death.
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In the following sections, we first consider the impact of product illegality on drug markets and how technology influences commerce and sales. We then introduce online illicit markets and the subsequent rise of cryptomarkets in the 2010s. Using data collected on one of the largest cryptomarkets for illegal drugs, we continue by evaluating the degree of competition on the drug market.