The operation to seize AlphaBay’s servers was led by the FBI and involved the cooperative efforts of law enforcement agencies in Thailand, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Canada, the United Kingdom, and France, along with the European law enforcement agency Europol. FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe, flanked by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, announce the takedown of the criminal website AlphaBay, the largest Darknet marketplace in the world, at a July 20 press conference in Washington, D.C. “Dark Web drug marketplace AlphaBay was shut down by law enforcement”. Ased on law enforcement’s investigation of AlphaBay, authorities believe the site was also used to launder hundreds of millions of dollars deriving from illegal transactions on the website. AlphaBay and Hansa Market were two of the top three criminal marketplaces on the dark web, Europol chief Rob Wainwright said at the press conference.
- Bryan Connor Herrell, a 25-year-old from Colorado, was sentenced to 11 years of prison time for acting as a moderator on the dark web marketplace AlphaBay.
- DeSnake says that the new AlphaBay has been built to last, using secure and audited code, bulletproof servers, and safeguards against disruptions caused by hardware failure, police raids, or seizures.
- He has covered the information security and privacy sector throughout his career.
On June 20, law enforcement took over the Hansa marketplace after investigations that began in 2016. On July 5, police in Thailand arrested Alexandre Cazes, alleged to be the operator of the large underground market AlphaBay. These efforts have taken two of the largest darknet markets offline. AlphaBay mysteriously went offline earlier this month fuelling suspicions among users that law enforcement action had taken place. It was widely considered the biggest online black market for drugs, estimated to host daily transactions totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds after filling the gap left by the takedown of Silk Road in 2013 by the FBI.
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The topics he writes about include malware, vulnerabilities, exploits and security defenses, as well as research and innovation in information security. His work has been published by Bitdefender, Netgear, The Security Ledger and Softpedia. Another system in place is Automatic Dispute Solver, which aims at solving problems between buyers and sellers without the intervention of a moderator.
Each market category has subcategories and several related items are offered for sale on each, making AlphaBay one of the most popular and unique dark web marketplaces since it operates both as a classic marketplace and a data store. This makes it valuable for both conventional crime and cybercrime actors. AlphaBay’s marketplace and forum are also available on the darknet I2P.
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Buyers and sellers inconvenienced by the takedown of AlphaBay and Hansa will find their way to one of the many options available today, just as with legitimate retail shops. Unlike in the days of Silk Road, buyers and sellers have many choices today. Formerly, darknet markets used various digital currencies and were just beginning to use Bitcoin as their primary means of trade, according to the McAfee report “Digital Laundry.” Silk Road popularized Bitcoin for darknet markets and it remains the primary currency. Several markets—such as Wall Street or Trade Route, which offer stolen databases and identity theft data among other goods—are experimenting in other crypto coins, such as Monero.
Because of the range of goods and services found for sale and the conversations that occur around these sales, dark web marketplaces can be precious sources of data on criminal activity. As such, they are normally under intense scrutiny from law enforcement and security professionals alike. AlphaBay’s quick growth—or regrowth—has been fueled in part by what Gray calls “the Great Cyber Resignation.” At least 10 dark web markets have dropped offline for various reasons in the last 18 months.
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DeSnake claims there have been 15,000 user accounts created, 450 vendors registered, and over 400 listings published as of the time of writing. Operation Bayonet, which would ultimately lead to the shutdown of several prominent marketplaces, began with Dutch police seizing another lesser-known market called Hansa Market. After compromising Hansa, authorities secretly operated the market for almost a month. While the Dutch focussed their efforts on Hansa, United States FBI operatives coordinated with international police to DDoS AlphaBay and seize its assets, enabling the Royal Thai Police to locate and arrest its administrator, Alexander Cazes (a.k.a. alpha02). AlphaBay reportedly launched in September 2014, pre-launched in November 2014 and officially launched on December 22, 2014.
It saw a steady growth, with 14,000 new users in the first 90 days of operation. The darknet informer website Gwern.net placed AlphaBay Market in the top tier of markets regarding the 6-month survival probability and it had proven to be successful. In October 2015, it was recognized as the largest online darknet market according to Dan Palumbo, research director at Digital Citizens Alliance.
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Some have been busted by law enforcement, like Dark Market, which was the target of a Europol-led takedown operation early last year; or Hydra, the massive Russian-language drug and money-laundering market whose servers were seized in a law enforcement raid in April. Others, like Dark0de and World Market, are believed to have pulled “exit scams,” disappearing suddenly with their users’ money. Still others, like Cannazon and White House Market, staged more considerate and organized exits, giving users time to pull out any funds held on the sites.
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Although facilitators of those sales were taken down, the market for data still exists. We will still see the buying and selling of credit cards, databases, entertainment accounts, and other data. The demand will also continue to lead to attacks to acquire this data. If enough markets are taken down, it may eventually become too risky for criminals to remain in business, but in the meantime we must be diligent to protect our assets. Nearly all the darknet markets deal in stolen credit cards, so there are plenty options.