The sale of such drugs on AlphaBay was detailed in a front-page article in The New York Times last month. DeSnake says his security practices—both the ones he’s applying within AlphaBay and on a personal level—go far beyond those of his predecessor, Cazes, who went by the online handle Alpha02. Cazes was caught, in part, through Bitcoin blockchain analysis that confirmed his role as AlphaBay’s boss, a trick that would be far more difficult, if not impossible, with Monero.
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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The products that are most commonly listed for sale include drugs, fake documents, fraud-related items, and hacking services and tools. The prices for these products range from a few dollars to hundreds and thousands of dollars, depending on how valuable the stolen or illegal product is and on how experienced and known the vendor and platform are. Much like Silk Road, AlphaBay was hosted on the dark web, and facilitated the sale and purchase of illegal goods, mostly drugs and hacking tools.
Its rules have always banned the sale of data stolen from victims in former USSR countries, a common prohibition among Russian hackers intended to shield them from Russian law enforcement scrutiny. And when Alexandre Cazes wrote under the Alpha02 moniker on the site, he sometimes signed off with a Russian phrase for “stay safe.” But when Cazes was later tracked down in Thailand, many assumed AlphaBay’s Russian fingerprints had been designed to mislead investigators. DeSnake credits his ongoing freedom to an operational security regimen that borders on the extreme. He says his work computers run an “amnesiac” operating system, like the security-focused Tails distribution of Linux, designed to store no data.
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Hansa, which has been operated by law enforcement since June 20, saw a large influx of AlphaBay users flock to its services. On July 17, law enforcement halted registrations to deal with the large migration. “This is likely one of the most important criminal investigations of the year – taking down the largest dark net marketplace in history. AlphaBay allowed users to sell and buy opioids, including fentanyl and heroin, contributing to a rising drug epidemic in the United States, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said at a news briefing in Washington, D.C. Alphabay Market was originally operating from 2014 to 2017 with alpha02 and DeSnake as admins and was the biggest darknet market in history.
- 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.
- 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.
“Biggest issue in that regard is the human needs … I would say that is the biggest inconvenience,” DeSnake writes. “You make sacrifices. Though once you get used to it, it becomes second nature.” The ethereum network’s transaction backlog has ensnared a number of cryptocurrency exchanges. With bitcoin bouncing off $10,500, Markets Daily is back with another time-saving crypto update. To request access this dataset you will need to login with an IMPACT account. Stay informed with cybersecurity news and analyst recommendations.
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The marketplaces are usually managed by an admin or a small group of admins, and the typical users of the marketplaces are cybercriminals who search for illegal products online that will help their own illicit activities. Greenberg managed to interview an impressive number of law enforcement agents, who helped him tell the story of these high-profile investigations from the inside. The beat-by-beat tale of the takedown of AlphaBay, then the largest dark web market in history, is perhaps the book’s most memorable story. This was key because the agents were worried they wouldn’t be able to get evidence from it if it was shut down and encrypted.
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.
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. The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes. The Dutch National Police took control of Hansa on 20 June, seizing servers in Lithuania, the Netherlands and Germany. The action permitted surveillance of criminal activities on the marketplace before it was shut down in July. AlphaBay’s servers were seized with the help of authorities in Thailand, Lithuania, Canada, Britain and France.
CommercialYesRegistrationRequiredUsers400,000+LaunchedSeptember 2014Current statusOfflineAlphaBay is a darknet market operating both as an onion service on the Tor network and as an I2P node on I2P. After it was shut down in July 2017 following law enforcement action in the United States, Canada, and Thailand as part of Operation Bayonet, it was relaunched in August 2021 by the self-described co-founder and security administrator DeSnake. The alleged original founder, Alexandre Cazes, a Canadian citizen born on 19 October 1991, was found dead in his cell in Thailand several days after his arrest, with police suspecting suicide. DeSnake, by contrast, makes the very bold claim that his work PC could not implicate him even if seized.But all of those technical and operational protections may matter less than a simple geographic one.
Covering topics in risk management, compliance, fraud, and information security. “Dark web exit scams are nothing new and are quite common,” according to Rick Holland, head of strategy at Digital Shadows, which tracks open, deep and dark web threats. In connection with the AlphaBay investigation, on July 5, police in Thailand arrested Canadian citizen Alexandre Cazes, 26, operating on an arrest warrant issued June 30 at the request of U.S. authorities, the Bangkok Post reported.
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. Additional language analysis reveals other questionable inconsistencies. In early August 2021, DeSnake resurfaced on Dread, the popular Reddit-like discussion forum on the darknet administrated and moderated by users, Hugbunter and Paris. Dread staff “vouched” for DeSnake to skeptical darknet users with DeSnake signing documents using their historical PGP key.