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A government shutdown of dark web marketplaces<\/a> AlphaBay and Hansa has merchants and consumers looking for a new home. <\/p>\n
Authorities <\/span>, the largest online marketplace for illegal goods, on July 4, and took down Hansa, the third largest, on Thursday. The sites, where people could buy drugs, guns and child pornography, had flourished since 2014, when a predecessor, Silk Road, was shut down.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Fueled by Tor browsers and cryptocurrencies that offer anonymity, AlphaBay, Hansa and other sites avoided much government detection, allowing\u00a0\u00a0in the wake of Silk Road’s demise. AlphaBay replaced as the biggest, growing to be 10 times larger.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
When one dark darknet market<\/a> falls, buyers and sellers just move on to the next one. <\/p>\n
The migration of buyers and sellers comes as authorities around the world crack down on digital marketplaces that cater to growing numbers of shadowy sales. <\/span> at the time it was taken offline. By comparison, Silk Road had just 14,000 when the Federal Bureau of Investigation closed it four years ago.<\/p>\n
Many of the sites <\/span>. A recent study by the University of Manchester and think tank Rand Europe found 811 arms-related listings on . The researchers found nearly 60% of the weapons came from the US and darkmarket list most of the sales were headed to Europe. Worryingly, one gun bought on a cryptomarket was used in a .<\/p>\n
FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe acknowledged shutting down such markets was like playing whack-a-mole. His agency would likely have to in the future, he said. <\/p>\n
“Critics will say as we shutter one site, another will emerge,” McCabe said at a press conference. “But that is the nature of criminal work. It never goes away, you have to constantly keep at it, and you have to use every tool in your toolbox.” <\/p>\n
One such tool: using a captured marketplace as a trap. <\/p>\n
After the fall of AlphaBay, Dutch police said they saw traffic heading to Hansa spike eight-fold. That was something the cops were anticipating.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Dutch police had full control of Hansa on June 20, but waited a month before shutting it down hoping to catch the new users in marketplace chaos. <\/p>\n
“We could identify and disrupt the regular criminal activity that was happening on Hansa market but also sweep up all of those new users that were displaced from AlphaBay and looking for a new trading platform for their criminal activities,” Rob Wainwright, the Europol director, said at the press conference. <\/p>\n
Dutch police now have the usernames, passwords and IP addresses of thousands of Hansa users, and are tracking them down. <\/p>\n
An underground in flux<\/h3>\n
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