After compromising Hansa, authorities secretly operated the market for almost a month. While the Dutch focussed their efforts on Hansa, United States FBI operatives coordinated with international police to DDoS AlphaBay and seize its assets, enabling the Royal Thai Police to locate and arrest its administrator, Alexander Cazes (a.k.a. alpha02). 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.
I want to dedicate this to alpha02 first and foremost we promised each other to go to the bitter end, here I am keeping my end of the deal. Second to all the previous AlphaBay users buyers and sellers alike who believed in us and support us throughout. Ideally the decentralized network would be up making any LE near impossible to actually disrupt operations. Third to all who keep silent and refuse to cooperate when LE asking, we saw who are real and who rolled over visible from the given sentences. Last I dedicate this to all people who finish something when they start it and keep their promises regardless of the situation.
Services
As part of the site’s relaunch, multiple new features have been advertised and new rules announced. Notable among new features are AlphaGuard , an automatic system to resolve disputes between buyers and sellers, exclusive use of Monero wallets, and the offering of I2P mirrors. Concerning rules, items newly prohibited from sale include COVID-19 vaccines, firearms, products containing the narcotic fentanyl, pornography, and “hitman services”. Furthermore, there is a ban on discussions of any public or private information related to the governments, organizations, or people of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan. This has led to loose speculation that there is a connection between the site operators and the governments of these nations. Still, some agitated users are arguing that, regardless of the date, displaying an IP address publicly is not an expected behavior on the dark web.
- Unlike any other marketplaces we actually have a vision for the future which involves an improvement for the darknet market scene as a whole .
- AlphaBay uses a .onion address which allows the website to run as a hidden service on the Tor network – this means that the physical location of the website remains anonymous, as well as the locations of Tor users who access it.
- That results in breaking the law and as these exchangers are official companies… arrests, operations and the rest will follow.
- Dangerous illegal products are added and bought on these marketplaces on an hourly basis, and more and more markets launch a matching forum to keep expanding and supporting criminal web activity.
- But as part of “Operation Bayonet,” spearheaded by the FBI and the EU’s law enforcement agency, Europol, authorities in mid-2017 took down the site, Thai police arrested Cazes, who was later found dead in his jail cell.
In April 2016, AlphaBay’s API was compromised, leading to 13,000 messages being stolen. In January 2017, the API was once again compromised, allowing over 200,000 private messages from the last 30 days and a list of usernames to be leaked. The attack was from a single hacker who was paid by AlphaBay for the disclosure. AlphaBay reported that the exploit had only been used in conjunction with this attack and not used previously.
Versus Darknet Market
The new management believes in the future and encourages everybody to use I2P. Furthermore, Tor has of late been neglecting some essential upgrades. This system ensures that even if the authorities seize all the servers, the customers would still be able to withdraw their funds.
Cazes and his wife amassed numerous high value assets, including luxury vehicles, residences and a hotel in Thailand. Cazes also possessed millions of dollars in cryptocurrency, which has been seized by the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration . The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you. Especially when using any public WiFi hotspots you should always use a VPN when accessing the Internet since you don’t know whether the access point is compromised.
Alphabay Link Onion
AlphaBay Featured ListingFour years after the market went down, the Market’s former customers and vendors got a reason to smile. One of AlphaBay’s administrators, DeSnake, released a PGP-signed statement on the Dread darknet forum. DeSnake , one of original AlphaBay’s administrators could not help, but bring back to life the former dark web giant. The message contained information about the intended relaunching of AlphaBay marketplace.
Coming up is the testing and finalization of the payment module, which will ostensibly replace AlphaGuard, AlphaBay’s current payment dispute and protections system. Further down the road, DeSnake will get to demoing the project and bringing on a marketing team. Some users claim that mr_white and his team from WHM are to blame for last week’s DDoS while others speculate that HugBunter himself could be mr_white. Interestingly, AlphaBay’s former moderator “Disc0” also chimed in, but using a lowercase “d” this time.
Also unlike Silk Road, there is no indication that the law enforcement took down the AlphaBay marketplace. Although the website sometimes goes down for maintenance, customers are speculating that the admins have stolen all their Bitcoins for good measure, when heard no words from the site’s admins on the downtime. AlphaBay, also known as “the new Silk Road,” has been shut down since Tuesday night. The site also came in the news at the beginning of this year when a hacker successfully hacked the AlphaBay site and stole over 200,000 private unencrypted messages from several users. 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.
Monitor The Dark Web
In addition, DeSnake claims AlphaBay has been rebuilt “from the ground up,” runs on bulletproof servers and offers a highly automated dispute-resolution system. Like many other markets, the site also offers a highly automated escrow service designed to combat nonfulfillment, which offers protections for buyers and sellers. The message was signed using a PGP key that DeSnake said he’d previously used to sign AlphaBay communications, and it provided links that individuals could use to verify that assertion.
The whole idea of ‘wallet-less’ marketplaces which became popular after our raids, is naive and pure marketing bullshit, your coins always go into an address controlled by the market for the duration of that transaction. It is up to the user to find the balance between convenience and security. Multisig monero will be integrated once it is more stable and mainstream, our tests have shown it is not ‘there’ just yet. Monero is a currency which we added previously on our marketplace alongside few others. Currently it is the only available cryptocurrency to use on our marketplace due to its higher security and anonimity. Anyone serious about their privacy should migrate from Bitcoin and the likes, and only use audited privacy coins to do transactions on the darknet.