Law enforcement agencies from many countries have collaborated to take down what Europol call the “world’s largest” illegal marketplace that’s on the dark web. There were 2400 plus sellers and more than 320,000 transactions had been carried through when it was shut down. Also US$171 million worth of cryptocurrency, more than 4 650 bitcoin were transferred. According to Europol, drugs, false money, malware, credit card details and unknown SIM card details are among what was sold through this.
Law enforcement agencies from Germany, Australia, Denmark, Moldova, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the USA are the others who engaged in the operation other than Europol. German government has been successful in arresting an Australian citizen who’s allegedly the operator behind the marketplace near the German-Danish border. The discoveries by a German cybercrime unit were immensely helpful in shutting down the DarkMarket and seizing more than 20 servers of them in Ukraine Moldova. Governments are currently investigating the data saved in those servers to lead to the marketplace’s moderators, sellers and buyers.
The Telegraph states that governments fell upon DarkMarket while examining Germany-web hosting service Cyberbunker. Over the past few years since the Silk Road bust back in 2015, DarkMarket is the latest dark web marketplace which was taken offline. International law enforcement operations were able to bring down AlphaBay and also the Wall Street Market, which also used to sell drugs and other illegal goods.
The governments are getting effective at identifying and closing down the dark web outlets which are illegal. But still they have a long way to go. It is certain that after the shutting down of DarkMarket down, the sellers and buyers who used it for their illegal transactions are most likely to move to another such outlet.
