The Two Biggest “Darknet” Markets Are Shut Down

The FBI and Interpol have taken down what Data Breach Today calls the two largest remaining “darknet marketplaces.” The sites are said to have been handling many times the volume of the notorious Silk Road marketplace that was shut down in 2013, and enabling the sale of “everything from weapons and drugs to healthcare data and counterfeit payment cards.” The first of the now defunct sites, AlphaBay was busted on July 4 by a joint FBI-DEA operation. Its alleged administrator, a 26-year-old Canadian, was detained in Thailand, where he is said to have then committed suicide while in custody. Meanwhile, many of AlphaBay’s tens of thousands of users migrated to another site, called Hansa, which it turned out had been taken over but kept in operation by Dutch police. They kept it going for a month, during which they say they garnered 10,000 foreign addresses and details on 38,000 drug transactions, in what apparently amounted to a massive cyber-sting operation.