Largest Darknet Takedown In History

I hope this hasn't already been posted. I searched for alphabay but no hits on this news item.

NPR Article
This story intrigues me because it's a part of the Internet that most people don't even know about. I liken it to the the backrooms of the underground where you would go to some shady part of town, knock on a door and had to know the secret handshake or password to get in. I've often wondered how to get to the "darknet" but never really looked into it. That's not because I wanted to do something illegal but just out of technology curiosity.

So here is what AlphaBay is all about:

The website allegedly trafficked in illegal drugs, stolen documents, counterfeit goods and "other computer hacking tools, firearms, and toxic chemicals throughout the world," according to the Justice Department. Officials say that around the time it was shuttered, AlphaBay boasted "250,000 listings for illegal drugs and toxic chemicals," as well as upwards of 100,000 other illicit items.

Think about this. Beside the illegal drugs, what foreign entities frequent this site? Is this where information gets bought and sold? It could very well be the place leaks of top secret or highly secure information gets traded. Maybe this is where WikiLeaks gets it's best insider content.

I know that shutting it down will just give someone else a reason to start a new one. It really is something that's part of the world we live in that just didn't exist before the Internet.

Curious what others think. How is this changing the world we live in?

Like everything else the government gets involved in it will go from arresting people hosting and using the darknet for illegal activities to the government actually running sites that do the same. That way they control all the guns, chemicals, drugs and information that flows through a site like that. Another business for the CIA to run, should go well with their poppy eradication program that's been such a stunning success in Afghanistan.

Plus I think it's only as 'dark' as who controls the TOR access nodes. And generally speaking, the governments control most of the nodes. So I'm fairly sure the security services are monitoring and recording most of what goes on there, adding it all to their dossiers and files.

a reply to: LogicalGraphitti

I know that shutting it down will just give someone else a reason to start a new one. It really is something that's part of the world we live in that just didn't exist before the Internet.

It has been part of the world for a very long time friend. Before electronic means it was called gentleman's clubs and they used couriers. Guess what? They still do.

Now it is available to anyone...time to crack down.

originally posted by: Painterz
Plus I think it's only as 'dark' as who controls the TOR access nodes. And generally speaking, the governments control most of the nodes. So I'm fairly sure the security services are monitoring and recording most of what goes on there, adding it all to their dossiers and files.

Don't tell me TOR is compromised. I recently installed the TOR browser. It's slow going through all the nodes but you get a better feeling you're not being recorded and watched.

originally posted by: Jonjonj
Now it is available to anyone...time to crack down.

Or join

originally posted by: LogicalGraphitti

originally posted by: Painterz
Plus I think it's only as 'dark' as who controls the TOR access nodes. And generally speaking, the governments control most of the nodes. So I'm fairly sure the security services are monitoring and recording most of what goes on there, adding it all to their dossiers and files.

Don't tell me TOR is compromised. I recently installed the TOR browser. It's slow going through all the nodes but you get a better feeling you're not being recorded and watched.

I hope you are using a linux based system to use Tor though, not a micro$oft or Apples one. You absolutely can not use T.. on those systems and expect privacy.

originally posted by: Jonjonj

originally posted by: LogicalGraphitti

originally posted by: Painterz
Plus I think it's only as 'dark' as who controls the TOR access nodes. And generally speaking, the governments control most of the nodes. So I'm fairly sure the security services are monitoring and recording most of what goes on there, adding it all to their dossiers and files.

Don't tell me TOR is compromised. I recently installed the TOR browser. It's slow going through all the nodes but you get a better feeling you're not being recorded and watched.

I hope you are using a linux based system to use Tor though, not a micro$oft or Apples one. You absolutely can not use T.. on those systems and expect privacy.

Thanks for the tip. As for Linux, have you tried Tails?

a reply to: Asktheanimals

Like they HAVEN'T for a WHILE now already?



Poo Bear likes honey...

a reply to: Jonjonj

TAILS. Bootable USB stick.

Even THEN it's not 100%.

originally posted by: LogicalGraphitti

originally posted by: Jonjonj

originally posted by: LogicalGraphitti

originally posted by: Painterz
Plus I think it's only as 'dark' as who controls the TOR access nodes. And generally speaking, the governments control most of the nodes. So I'm fairly sure the security services are monitoring and recording most of what goes on there, adding it all to their dossiers and files.

Don't tell me TOR is compromised. I recently installed the TOR browser. It's slow going through all the nodes but you get a better feeling you're not being recorded and watched.

I hope you are using a linux based system to use Tor though, not a micro$oft or Apples one. You absolutely can not use T.. on those systems and expect privacy.

Thanks for the tip. As for Linux, have you tried Tails?

I did when I was first interested in the darkweb, but to be honest, once you have seen the Intel hub and the other conspiracy sites like SIN (down again?) there really was nothing to interest me.

I honestly don't care about backdoors to sites and the rest...meh.

Tails is a good resource if you are a journalist though, so there is that.

EDIT: Make sure you make a bootable usb, I installed the frickin thing over my laptop because I was too eager and uninformed.

stupid people! only the government is allowed to sell illegal arms, toxic materials, drugs and buy/sell slaves and use assassins!
it's for freedom and democracy after all, you know!

a reply to: LogicalGraphitti

From the FBI -




FBI - Darknet Takedown Authorities Shutter Online Criminal Market AlphaBay

The largest marketplace on the Darknet—where hundreds of thousands of criminals anonymously bought and sold drugs, weapons, hacking tools, stolen identities, and a host of other illegal goods and services—has been shut down as a result of one the most sophisticated and coordinated efforts to date on the part of law enforcement across the globe.

In early July, multiple computer servers used by the AlphaBay website were seized worldwide, and the site’s creator and administrator—a 25-year-old Canadian citizen living in Thailand—was arrested. AlphaBay operated for more than two years and had transactions exceeding $1 billion in Bitcoin and other digital currencies. The site, which operated on the anonymous Tor network, was a major source of heroin and fentanyl, and sales originating from AlphaBay have been linked to multiple overdose deaths in the United States.


“This was a landmark operation,” said FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe during a press conference at the Department of Justice to announce the results of the case. “We’re talking about multiple servers in different countries, hundreds of millions in cryptocurrency, and a Darknet drug trade that spanned the globe.”

A dedicated team of FBI agents, intelligence analysts, and support personnel worked alongside domestic and international law enforcement partners to shut down the site and stop the flow of illegal goods. “AlphaBay was truly a global site,” said Special Agent Nicholas Phirippidis, one of the FBI investigators who worked on the case from the FBI’s Sacramento Division. “Vendors were shipping illegal items from places all over the world to places all over the world.”

The website, an outgrowth of earlier dark market sites like Silk Road—but much larger—went online in December 2014. It took about six months for the underground marketplace to pick up momentum, Phirippidis said, “but after that it grew exponentially.”

AlphaBay reported that it serviced more than 200,000 users and 40,000 vendors. Around the time of takedown, the site had more than 250,000 listings for illegal drugs and toxic chemicals, and more than 100,000 listings for stolen and fraudulent identification documents, counterfeit goods, malware and other computer hacking tools, firearms, and fraudulent services. By comparison, the Silk Road dark market—the largest such enterprise of its kind before it was shut down in 2013—had approximately 14,000 listings.

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.

“Conservatively, several hundred investigations across the globe were being conducted at the same time as a result of AlphaBay’s illegal activities,” Phirippidis said. “It really took an all-hands effort among law enforcement worldwide to deconflict and protect those ongoing investigations.”
Infographic depicting statistics related to the online Darknet marketplace AlphaBay, the seizure of which was announced by law enforcement officials on July 20, 2017.

U.S. law enforcement also worked with numerous foreign partners to freeze and preserve millions of dollars in cryptocurrency representing the proceeds of AlphaBay’s illegal activities. Those funds will be the subject of forfeiture actions.

click link for entire release.

a reply to: LogicalGraphitti

I think TOR is forever compromised. Not in a public open to any way, but there is closed access for law enforcement and Co.

TOR is still safer, you just need to play with the law of averages to stay on top if you are doing bad things. Hide in the traffic, wait for busy times...As someone said before use linux or something odd.

You can only have some level of privacy by using uncommon encryption. ANYTHING you send unencrypted you just sent UNENCRYPTED. TOR wouldnt change that.

If the exit nodes are compromised and enough of them ARE, people can access the whole onion. If those communications are encrypted though you stand a better chance of actual privacy.

Its actually alot harder than I made it sound. I am a sperm cell with this stuff, not a even a baby.

So who or what will take the place of AlphaBay? Someone always steps in to fill the demand.

a reply to: LogicalGraphitti

Really? The core principle of Tor, "onion routing", was developed in the mid-1990s by United States Naval Research Laboratory employees, mathematician Paul Syverson and computer scientists Michael G. Reed and David Goldschlag, with the purpose of protecting U.S. intelligence communications online.

originally posted by: LogicalGraphitti

originally posted by: Painterz
Plus I think it's only as 'dark' as who controls the TOR access nodes. And generally speaking, the governments control most of the nodes. So I'm fairly sure the security services are monitoring and recording most of what goes on there, adding it all to their dossiers and files.

Don't tell me TOR is compromised. I recently installed the TOR browser. It's slow going through all the nodes but you get a better feeling you're not being recorded and watched.

TOR was compromised a few years ago. Sorry, don't remember the exact year, but I think it was 2014. It was taken over by the FBI, that actually did run the paedophile network on TOR (not sure if they still do, or if they shut it down). Tens of thousands all over the world has been arrested on the background of information from FBI.

The arrests has been slow, the last one I heard about was 2016. Lots of trials all over the world still ongoing. About 10 in the country where I live in.

originally posted by: LogicalGraphitti

originally posted by: Jonjonj

originally posted by: LogicalGraphitti

originally posted by: Painterz
Plus I think it's only as 'dark' as who controls the TOR access nodes. And generally speaking, the governments control most of the nodes. So I'm fairly sure the security services are monitoring and recording most of what goes on there, adding it all to their dossiers and files.

Don't tell me TOR is compromised. I recently installed the TOR browser. It's slow going through all the nodes but you get a better feeling you're not being recorded and watched.

I hope you are using a linux based system to use Tor though, not a micro$oft or Apples one. You absolutely can not use T.. on those systems and expect privacy.

Thanks for the tip. As for Linux, have you tried Tails?

I would say drop the idea of using TOR, it is not safe (on any OS). I would go for a VPN instead. Or you can wait for SAFE network (think that is the name, made by maidsafe), but that wont come out before earliest late 2017 (not likely) or late 2018 ( most probably). They are in alpha the last time I checked (last month).

If you are looking into linux, then I would recommend either Ubuntu Mate or Mint (Mint is not part of *buntu OS), they are both very similar to Windows. Not very hard to use.

originally posted by: carewemust
So who or what will take the place of AlphaBay? Someone always steps in to fill the demand.

NBC News‏Verified account @NBCNews 54m54 minutes ago

Fentanyl and heroin listings spike again after demise of two of the largest black-market sites nbcnews.to...

a reply to: Jonjonj
Hi, what's SIN please?