TronWeekly

Crypto World News

You are here: Home / Archives for Dark web

Dark web

AlphaBay Underground Market’s ‘Moderator’ Sentenced to 11 years in jail

by

The U.S. Department of Justice, in an official statement, revealed that the moderator of the now-defunct darknet marketplace the Alphabay, Bryan Connor Herrell, has been sentenced to 11 years in jail in prison by United States District Court Judge Dale A. Drozd.

The platform was one of the world’s largest online marketplaces for drugs, guns, credit card data, and other illegal items paid for with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Monero.

Acting Assistant Attorney General Rabbitt stated,

“This sentence of an AlphaBay employee demonstrates the collective efforts of law enforcement authorities in the United States and Europe to find and prosecute transnational criminal actors wherever they hide. The department will continue to work tirelessly to hold accountable criminals who use the Dark Web to facilitate illegal activity no matter where they may be located.”

The court document detailed that the 26-year old Colorado resident, Harell, allegedly operated under usernames “Penissmith” and “Botah” and settled disputes between vendors and purchasers.

Additionally, he also provided a service dedicated to “monitoring attempts to defraud AlphaBay users”, and was paid in Bitcoin for his participation.

AlphaBay operated on an onion service of the Tor network and had over 400,000 users towards the end of its operation. Throughout the past couple of years, law enforcement efforts have untangled and disbanded several large criminal operations. For AlphaBay, it was the multinational law enforcement ‘Operation Bayonet’ that resulted in its demise as well as that of another platform called ‘Hansa’ in July 2017.

Alexandre Cazes, a Canadian citizen and alleged Founder of the online darknet market was found dead in his cell in Thailand several days after his arrest warrant was executed by the Royal Thai Police, with assistance from the FBI and DEA.

As a result of his death, the indictment against Cazes was dismissed, however, investigation of the darknet marketplace and its former administrators continues.

Indian Citizen Indicted after Purchasing Drugs Worth $27,000 Using Bitcoin on Dark Web

by

There is no question that cryptocurrencies, by providing easier access to capital and financial services, have the potential to enable social and economic growth worldwide, particularly in developing countries. On the contrary, we can not ignore the fact that criminals use cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin to run and fund illegal activity on the dark web. However, the law enforcement authorities keep a close watch, with such crimes committed on the dark Internet using cryptocurrencies. According to a report by the Times of India on August 24, a man from Kerala is being detained by the Narcotics Control Bureau for allegedly purchasing drugs on the dark web using Bitcoin.

24 year old indicted for buying ecstasy using crypto

K Rahman, a 24-year-old man from Kerala , India, has been indicted by the authorities for allegedly acquiring $27,000 ecstasy pills using Bitcoin. According to the report, the drugs were shipped from Frankfurt at the end of July using a fake address. The suspect was about to receive illicit narcotics through the Foreign Post Office in Chamrajpet.

In fact, the contents of the parcel were 750 grey and brown pills, which were later identified as ecstasy, often referred to as MDMA. The report states that the package was initially examined on 31 July. Upon testing the material as illegal, the authorities initiated an investigation headed by Bangalore’s regional director of the Narcotics Control Bureau, Amit Ghawate.

After almost 20 days of tracking the recipient of the package, the bureau captured Rahman. According to the officer in charge of the case, Rahman sells narcotics to youngsters, especially college students. He notes:

“Rahman had, on previous occasions, ordered the drugs and received them at the city’s FPO before selling them at parties and among youngsters, mostly college students.”

BTC usage on the dark web

Currently, Bitcoin is the most widely accepted crypto, both on the dark web and legit markets. Darknet markets (DNM) are known to supply all sorts of goods, some illicit, some less so, but acquirable using crypto such as BTC and delivered to your destination.

The dark web mainly operates using Bitcoin or the privacy-focused monero cryptocurrency. According to a report by Crystal Blockchain Analytics back in May, Bitcoin activity on the dark internet increased by 65 percent during Q1, 2020.

US Charges Dutch National With Running Crypto-Funded Child Porn Site

by

The Spanish authorities have indicted a number of individuals with the ongoing investigation of crypto-funded child porn websites on the dark web. The Spanish Civil Guard reportedly brought down a dark web-based crypto-funded child porn gang that used cryptocurrency transactions to subscribe to the contents.

According to the Spanish Civil Guard, the operation known as “Jekyll” nabbed three individuals connected to the “Welcome 2 Video” platform. However, the Spanish authorities have received additional reinforcement from the US authorities to take down the crypto-funded child porn gang.

Crypto-funded child porn business on the dark web

Users of the platform would pay using digital currencies such as bitcoin or any other privacy token to access content on the dark web. And the platform rewarded members for uploading their videos and photos to the dark web-based website. The examination of thousands of cryptocurrency transactions led to the final arrest of individuals connected to the site.

Additionally, Spanish law enforcement reportedly detained an individual in Bilbao, Spain, during operation “Kugantxu.” As per the police, the person was arrested for purchasing and streaming for pornographic content where minors were sexually violated live on-demand. The name of the website has not yet been revealed.

International co-operation against child pornography

Notably, the Civil Guard claims that the dark web site is operated by people based in the Philippines. Once the Philippine Transnational Criminal Investigation Unit was informed, they were able to recognize the content shared by individuals.  The Spanish authorities also carried out an operation called “kiru,” which resulted in the arrest of a man based in Madrid for defiling his 16-year-old stepdaughter.

The large international operation led to the identification of 20 individuals based in the U.S.; Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, and Peru. Furthermore, earlier this month, a South Korean court ordered all the crypto assets and digital wallets owned by Cho Ju-bin to be frozen, the suspect behind Nth Room, a child porn channel based on Telegram.

Interpol Enters Deal With South Korea’s S2W Lab Over Cyber Threat Intelligence Data

by

With the growing development of the digital asset universe, it is common to expect that illicit activities in the dark web will intensify. Over the past years, major cyber-crime and criminal activities have been carried out over the darknet, causing serious damage to financial institutions and individuals around the world.

Now, according to a recent press release, S2W Lab, a South Korean start-up has agreed and signed an official agreement with Interpol over the security of the online networks.

The French-based International Police Organization has entered into an agreement on the start-up of data intelligence to share information on cyber threat intelligence. After the announcement, Suh Sangduk, CEO of S2W Lab said,

“Cybercrime of dark web is hard to track due to its characteristics and wide usage of crypto-currencies and this is where S2W lab specializes in offering a technology which will help the Interpol to mitigate cyber threats prevailing on the dark web landscape”.

Launching back in 2018, S2W Lab is a company with expertise in the extraction and capture of large amounts of key data related to the Dark Net. Tracking data over the Darknet is an extremely tedious task, and police agencies around the world have a number of cybersecurity offices set up to track the offender’s trails.

The above agreement would ease the load on Interpol, as the S2W Lab will reduce the difficulty of filtering the data connected to the targeted individuals that are consistently active on the dark web.

Cyber-Crime in Crypto

Cryptocurrencies are a traceable form of digital assets, and one would assume that criminals would probably stay away from such medium of exchanges. The assumption couldn’t be more wrong.

Earlier in late January, Chainalysis had released a report that revealed that despite Bitcoin’s centralized network, the digital currency continued to register a higher volume of transactions that were linked to the darknet and possible illicit activities.

By the end of 2019, Bitcoin was used to conduct transactions worth over a whopping $601 million.

Jonathan Levin, Chainalysis Co-Founder, said,

“so the darknet markets are definitely evolving in their business models and how they store cryptocurrency that typically if they want to be able to access a large audience of buyers. The vendors, themselves, are still accepting Bitcoin because that’s where the majority of users are still comfortable to spend their cryptocurrency.”

Additionally, the Co-founder also added that crime-related to other digital assets was significantly less, with Bitcoin being the favored digital asset in the Dark Web.

Chainalysis Head of Research, Kimberly Grauer spoke about cryptocurrency money-laundering and believed that over the years, an estimated $2.5 billion in Bitcoin-related illicit activities were transferred to several exchanges.

Major exchanges such as Binance and Huobi were in the mix, with Binance accounting for a share of 27.5 percent.