AlphaBay, the Largest Online ‘Dark Market,’ Shut Down OPA

The operation included the arrest of suspected AlphaBay founder Alexandre Cazes on 5 July, a Canadian citizen detained on behalf of the US in Thailand. Hansa Market had about 1,800 vendors selling drugs of all sorts, the Dutch authorities said on Thursday. AlphaBay grew into a business with 200,000 users and 40,000 vendors — or 10 times the size of Silk Road — the Justice Department said Thursday. In the meantime, DeSnake wants to attract users with promises of a still-unproven system he calls AlphaGuard, designed to let users withdraw their funds even if authorities once again seize the servers that run AlphaBay’s infrastructure. Implement NIST’s risk management framework, from defining risks to selecting, implementing and monitoring information security controls.

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And he claims to have built complex technical protections that include redundant infrastructure in multiple countries, along with a system called AlphaGuard that’s designed to automatically relaunch the site on new servers in the case of a bust. “We will be back and running within a few days and without a cent lost,” DeSnake says. Sign up for a free trialand see how Flashpoint can provide you with the actionable intelligence your team needs to identify and respond to cyber and physical threats targeting your organization. “Thailand seizes $21 million in assets from dead founder of dark net marketplace AlphaBay”. U-47700, a synthetic opioid, revealed that the drugs were purchased on AlphaBay from Khelborod and Barrero. According to another complaint affidavit filed in the Middle District of Florida against Jeremy Achey, an investigation into a fentanyl overdose death in Orange County, Florida, on February 27, revealed that the lethal substance was purchased on AlphaBay from Achey.

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When dark net markets are shut, their users typically move quickly to new markets. But on Thursday, news of the joint operation sent the community into a panic. AlphaBay, the largest so-called dark net market, was taken down in early July at the same time the authorities arrested the reported founder of the site, Alexandre Cazes, a Canadian man who was living in Bangkok. I’m very curious to see over the coming days and weeks how users react to the news.

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It was widely considered the biggest online black market for drugs, estimated to host daily transactions totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. The AlphaBay takedown involved officials from six countries and Europol, led by the American authorities. The Dutch police led the takedown of Hansa Market, but both efforts were coordinated under the code name Operation Bayonet. It was not the first time that the United States and European authorities worked together on online black markets.

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Cazes was found dead of an apparent suicide in a Thai jail cell a week after his arrest; like many in the dark web community, DeSnake believes Cazes was murdered in prison. He was driven to rebuild AlphaBay, he says, after reading about an FBI presentation on the circumstances of Cazes’ arrest that he deemed disrespectful. “AlphaBay name was put in bad light after the raids. I am here to make amends to that.” U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey Sessions is concerned about the use of bitcoin by dark markets online.

  • The authorities have moved quickly to seize Mr. Cazes’ significant assets, including properties in Antigua, Cyprus and Thailand; 10 vehicles, including a Lamborghini and a Porsche; and financial assets of about $18 million.
  • AlphaBay is noteworthy in the world of darknet markets for accepting another cryptocurrency in addition to bitcoin; support for Monero, supposedly more anonymous, was implemented at the end of August 2016.
  • Cazes, 25, apparently took his life a week later while in Thai custody, the justice department said.
  • 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 man said to be the founder and leading operator of the site, Mr. Cazes, was arrested at his home in Bangkok on July 5, officials said on Thursday.

AlphaBay and Hansa Market were successors to the first and most famous market operating on the so-called dark net, Silk Road, which the authorities took down in October 2013. After AlphaBay went down, users streamed to one of its largest competitors, Hansa Market. DeSnake counters that if law enforcement had gotten to him and launched the new AlphaBay as a honeypot, they would have simply reused the original AlphaBay’s code. And he points out that the Monero-only restriction for the site would make it far less effective for trapping unsuspecting dark web buyers than a site that simply accepts Bitcoin. Gray points to a thread on the largely Russian cybercrime forum XSS, where many commenters expressed their skepticism about DeSnake’s return, some implying that he’s being controlled by law enforcement. “Lol, how many honest comrades will DeSnake have to turn in now to leave the punishment cell?” one commenter asked in Russian.

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The new AlphaBay is claimed to be run by the other administrator, a threat actor operating under the alias DeSnake. On GhostBin, DeSnake claimed they are bringing back the forum because of the poor state of operating darknet marketplaces, and to honor the legacy of the previous moderator Alpha02 , who died by suicide in Thailand after his arrest following the seizure of the original forum. In order to prevent users from losing money to similar seizures, DeSnake said they have created a system called “AlphaGuard” which would allow threat actors operating on the forum to withdraw funds even if all servers are seized. It is relatively simple to use search engines and popular communities to find a list of darknet markets. Dream Market is mostly a drug-sales market but also includes a large amount of digital goods.

Some of these opportunistic markets quickly shut their doors, while others were scams to take advantage of buyers looking for new places to purchase illegal goods. Sheep Market absconded with more than $40 million in an elaborate exit scam. Other markets have come and gone for various reasons, including law enforcement takedowns such as Silk Road 2.0 in 2014.

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While darknet sites offer users a veneer of anonymity, suspected users and administrators are not immune to being unmasked and arrested. “The Evolution market famously ended with the loss of 40,000 bitcoins,” he adds. “These exit scams are one of the risks when conducting business in criminal marketplaces,” especially given the soaring value of a bitcoin, which is currently more than $2,330.

At the time of its demise in July 2017, AlphaBay had over 400,000 users. The investigation into AlphaBay revealed that numerous vendors sold fentanyl and heroin, and there have been multiple overdose deaths across the country attributed to purchases on the site. Authored by Dexter Shin Instagram has become a platform with over a billion monthly active users. Authored by SangRyol Ryu Cybercriminals are always after illegal advertising revenue. Authored by SangRyol Ryu and Yukihiro Okutomi McAfee’s Mobile Research team recently analyzed new malware targeting mobile…

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Cazes was arrested “with a view toward extradition to face federal criminal charges in the United States,” Melissa Sweeney, a spokeswoman with the U.S. It is estimated that the market transacted at least $1 billion worth of cryptocurrency since its creation. Someone named DeSnake was the other partner, responsible for the security of the market, and was never caught by the police.

DeSnake apparently eluded the takedown of AlphaBay and now plans to resurrect it.

The AlphaBay darkweb market has come back to life after an administrator of the original project relaunched it over the weekend. DarkOwl has assigned assets to monitoring and collecting data from the new AlphaBay Marketplace, despite their increased crawler detection measures and ongoing server instability. Our analysts will continue to follow this market’s presence and reputation on the darknet, and provide further updates as this story unfolds.

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