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Joe July 20, 2017So basically the admins of the website were in prison already and for a month the website was run by Petra Haandrikman and her team mates from Dutch police continuing to allow drug transactions. The only people who are interested in drug users having higher quality drugs are drug users and their enablers. Ironically, some of the services that can be bought and sold on the AlphaBay Market include spam sending services, “bank drops” , account details, and other services useful to fraudsters engaged in phishing. This attack could therefore be viewed as yet another example of fraudsters defrauding fraudsters. The stolen credentials are then submitted to a PHP script, which immediately redirects the victim to the genuine AlphaBay hidden service. However, in the case of this phishing attack, the fraudster has simply created a lookalike domain on the public internet, using the address pwoah7foa6au2pul.me.pn.
ScamWatch Team consists of the most active users who observe the market and report suspicious activity. Search Results with Small Vendor Listing Chance was invented to provide small vendors with an opportunity to score a higher position among the search results. Automatic Dispute Resolver System means that seller and buyer exchange propositions that they can accept or reject without a third-party interference.
Cocorico Market Link
In fact, since AlphaBay’s August 2021 relaunch, the illicit marketplace landscape has been tumultuous to say the least. The first half of 2022 was marked by takedowns, shut downs, and exit scams of top markets. Today’s version of AlphaBay experienced a relatively slow start, as vendors and buyers questioned the nature of this relaunch, wary of law enforcement involvement. DeSnake’s eagerness to launch AlphaBay with increased security measures, like AlphaGuard and a decentralization project—an effort to sidestep whatever operational security Cazes blundered, eventually leading to his detainment—was met with some skepticism. Extortion activity by the darkoverlord, a threat actor we have cited previously, illustrates this point.
AlphaBay was created by Alexandre Cazes, who lived in Thailand. He singlehandedly controlled all aspects of the site’s operations through June 2017. The investigation into AlphaBay appears to have started as early as 2015 when undercover agents posing as customers started making small purchases on the site. In one case, an agent bought an ATM skimming device; in another, an undercover officer purchased a small quantity of drugs. The operation to shutter AlphaBay and Hansa grew out of several independent investigations, according to U.S.
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Cazes also possessed millions of dollars in cryptocurrency, which has been seized by the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration . “Thailand seizes $21 million in assets from dead founder of dark net marketplace AlphaBay”. “Suspected AlphaBay founder dies in Bangkok jail after shutdown of online black market”.
Cybercriminals using forums are wary of law enforcement posing as users. Some forums regulate activity with “forum lifecycles,” which limit new users’ access and set posting restrictions until they reach a certain level of activity. New users might require positive feedback from other members until these limitations are lifted. “Your account information and payment card details, along with counterfeit documents, ID scans, banking Trojans … those things are still being traded,” Amado explains. “They’re not being sold on marketplaces, they’re being sold on forums.”
Darknet Takedown
Brian Fiori July 21, 2017No matter how much law enforcement works to fight crime, there will always be more crime. George G July 20, 2017You will find that in every undercover police operation like this , the “process” is allowed to go forward for a while, until enough evidence is collected, needed information is obtained. AlexT July 23, 2017I have no idea what Dutch law says about “sting operations” but I would be interested to read about it. With bitcoin, you’re anonymous – until you’re not – then you never were. In our interview, Haandrikman detailed the dual challenges of simultaneously dealing with the exodus of AlphaBay users to Hansa and keeping tabs on the giant increase in new illicit drug orders that were coming in daily as a result.
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- The sites operated on the Tor network, which helps users browse the internet anonymously.
- 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.
Assurances were made by purported AlphaBay admins that the outage was due to an unannounced security update on its servers, an assurance that rang ever more hollow the longer AlphaBay was unavailable. U.S. and European law enforcement authorities say the closures of AlphaBay and Hansa Market were the largest dark Web criminal marketplace takedown in history. AlphaBay’s seizure meant thousands of vendors and buyers in the English-speaking cybercrime community had to look elsewhere to conduct their illicit business. The marketplace consisted of more than 40,000 vendors and generated more than $1 billion in trade, Digital Shadows reports in “Seize and Desist?,” a new report examining cybercrime marketplaces post-AlphaBay.
Site allegedly sold counterfeit credit cards, illegal drugs
Sub-communities follow website rules and can add additional rules/operating structures by their respective ‘community manager’. The long-term vision for such communities from the start when VXcode was launched, was to be sustainable enough that in the event of a raid/seizure it can recover. Large sub-communities can even setup their own dedicated forums hosted by members or community managers while maintaining presence on AlphaBay Forum.
