In October 2015, it was recognized as the largest online darknet market according to Dan Palumbo, research director at Digital Citizens Alliance. We also expect to see continued sales of stolen data and malware because some markets, especially the smallest, are eager to take on the new business. The relatively new market House of Lions is offering AlphaBay vendors discounts to move their shipments to its platform. These new platforms need established, trusted sellers to bring in more clients. AlphaBay mysteriously went offline earlier this month, prompting speculation among its users that authorities had seized the site.
The seizure and civil forfeiture of three former drug houses in Rutland, Vermont is helping to restore a community hit hard by the opioid epidemic. In early July, days before AlphaBay servers were seized, Europol hosted a command post staffed with representatives from the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Department of Justice, along with its own members. The command post was the central hub for information exchange during the AlphaBay operation. 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. Platform Platform Overview Learn more about Flashpoint’s products and services.
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On November 26, 2021, Panasonic joined a long list of companies that suffered a data breach over the past year. See the posts we found in the dark web that could indicate that an attack was in the making. The police have reportedly seized a total of €400,000, including nearly €100,000 in cash that was discovered hidden behind a spare tire in a garage during the arrest.
Like the historic AlphaBay, the market’s forum is located on the same domain as the market and has limited discussions. Most of the forum is marked private until the user formally introduces themselves in accordance with the rules outlined by DeSnake. There is a “Admin” account as was the case with the historical AlphaBay forum, and DeSnake also has their own personal account. DarkOwl believes this account may be maintained by DeSnake based on the observation that they leave a similar “Thank You.” at the end of every post. Prior to AlphaBay, Alexander Cazes had a reputable history on the darknet – specifically in the carding community.
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But Gray said that is all part of the growing pains of a new cybercriminal enterprise. As of Wednesday, the new AlphaBay website was inaccessible, Flashpoint said. DeSnake claimed they were the victim of distributed denial-of-service attacks from a rival scammer. Whether or not the revamped AlphaBay gains the clout among criminals that its predecessor enjoyed remains to be seen. The person who apparently boasted that AlphaBay is back, who goes by the alias DeSnake, has street credibility among crooks.
- Bryan Connor Herrell, a 25-year-old from Fresno, California, pleaded guilty this week in the US to racketeering charges related to the now-defunct dark web marketplace Alphabay.
- Cazes was logged on to AlphaBay at the time of his arrest, allowing authorities to find his passwords and other information about the site’s servers, according to legal documents.
- While navigating the domain manually, DarkOwl analysts regularly had to reset their Tor circuit and refresh their identity to simply view the vendor listings.
- Some users claim that mr_white and his team from WHM are to blame for last week’s DDoS while others speculate that HugBunter himself could be mr_white.
- Never share passwords and keep an eye on bank accounts for suspicious activity.
Kingdom Market is a newer darknet market that has been around since April 2021 but was only recently vetted for listing on Dread, the pre-eminent forum for markets on the dark web. It features a unique site design unlike any other market yet is still intuitive and easy to use. Conspicuously absent are some preferred features, such as the lack of per-order purchases, a multi-sig option for BTC payments, and forced PGP encryption for communications. It makes up for this with enhanced security and user safety features, helping users to assure they are not getting phished. The sites operated on the Tor network, which helps users browse the internet anonymously.
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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. By comparison, the infamous SilkRoad had a little over 950,000 users and about 14,000 listings, most of them for drugs. It transacted 9.5 million bitcoins in two-years time, valued at $1.2 billion at the time.
All of that suggests AlphaBay may already be the most popular market for dark web vendors to list their wares for sale. Five years after it was torn offline, the resurrected dark web marketplace is clawing its way back to the top of the online underworld. The operation to shut down AlphaBay was led by the FBI and involved law enforcement authorities in Thailand, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Canada, the United Kingdom, and France, along with Europol. It is expected that hundreds of new investigations will be generated worldwide as a result of the takedowns. Falling short may be DeSnake’s push to adopt I2P as an alternative to Tor, as it has not had the impact on the marketplace landscape as expected.
A week later, Cazes apparently took his own life while in custody in Thailand. “Suspected AlphaBay founder dies in Bangkok jail after shutdown of online black market”. This is the book’s first wow moment, and it comes at the end of Part 1, which is mostly spent setting the stage and explaining the technology behind Bitcoin and how it was used to facilitate online drug trafficking. The book truly takes off in Part 2 with a series of stories featuring law enforcement agents from California to Bangkok chasing dark web drug kingpins on the web, on the blockchain and in real life. Authorities said the law enforcement action was one of the largest ever taken against criminals on the dark web, part of the internet that is accessible only through certain software and typically used anonymously. While the infamous Silk Road made a lot more headlines, another dark web market place had many more members and a wider reach.
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“When it comes to the money making this is investment in the future of AlphaBay,” DeSnake writes. “When it comes to ideology I think that is pretty clear. The reason is to make good to the AlphaBay name … this is our way to reimburse the darknet scene for what has happened.” While few of DeSnake’s claims can be confirmed, he has at least enjoyed unusual longevity for a dark web market operator. Security firm Flashpoint says it has seen evidence and descriptions of DeSnake operating under the same pseudonym—first as a credit-card-focused cybercriminal on sites like Evolution and Tor Carder Forum before becoming a market administrator himself—since at least 2013. Stolen and fake identification documents, malware, hacking tools, firearms, and fraudulent services accounted for another 100,000 listings. AlphaBay now only accepts the cryptocurrency Monero, and heavily promotes that users access it via I2P instead of Tor, calling their Tor services “mirrors” to the main I2P eepsite.
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A senior member from the carding community Ranklez claimed he had evidence to suggest Cazes wasn’t alpha02. Ranklez and alpha02 had a history in the carding community as Ranklez sold alpha02 fullz for conducting identity theft. They worked closely with a “security administrator” and second in command known as DeSnake, or simply “DS” for short. According to our historical darknet records, DeSnake had connections in Russia although his true identity and location was not publicly known.
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Justice Department said on Thursday it had shut down the dark web marketplace AlphaBay, working with international partners to knock offline the site accused of allowing a global trade in drugs, firearms, computer hacking tools and other illicit goods. The American and European authorities said on Thursday that they had shut down two of the largest online black markets, AlphaBay and Hansa Market, and arrested their operators. Nicolas Christin, a dark-web-focused computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, verified DeSnake’s PGP key against a copy found in his own archive of messages. But that key, he says, could be in the control of law enforcement agencies, or DeSnake himself could have become a law enforcement cooperator. After all, at the same time as AlphaBay’s 2017 takedown, the Dutch police took over and controlled Hansa, the second-largest dark web market at the time. “It’s unlikely,” Christin says of theories that DeSnake is compromised, “but not impossible.”