Deep in the Dark Web, drugs, weapons, stolen data and counterfeit money are traded. DarkMarket was, according to Europol, the largest illegal market on that dark web where criminals can hide from the police.
DarkMarket in figures:
- almost 500 000 users;
- more than 2 400 sellers;
- over 320 000 transactions;
- more than 4 650 bitcoin and 12 800 monero transferred.
An international operation coordinated by Europol has managed to deactivate this illegal buying and selling platform. The German police have been in charge of arresting the person who would be responsible for keeping DarkMarket operational and confiscating the 20 servers where all the transactions carried out by criminals were housed.
About 500,000 users gathered in this market and it is estimated that they could have carried out 320,000 transactions behind the back of the authorities. Stolen products were bought here as personal data obtained with cyberattacks such as credit cards and passwords. Drugs or computer viruses and counterfeit money were also traded.
To pay for these purchases, criminals have come to exchange about 140 million euros today, in which real money is mixed with cryptocurrencies. Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies are already used in many legal transactions, but they are still a good resource to make it difficult for the authorities to trace the money.
With the seizure of servers in Ukraine and Moldova, authorities have a good opportunity to investigate buyers and sellers who used this illegal market for their business. All this research stems from another in which the focus of the investigation was the web hosting company Cyberbunker , as explained in The Guardian.
Cyberbunker was in a former NATO bunker and its servers have come to host pages like The Pirate Bay and WikiLeaks. Operations like this have been repeated in recent years and the authorities have managed to close other illegal platforms such as Empire Market or Wall Street Market.
The government and an international collaboration l seem to be getting put in check all these hidden pages in the Dark Web, although other cases have been responsible those who have decided themselves put up the shutters and hide the money raised for fear of being found.
