Dark Markets Belarus
Understanding Dark Markets
The platform enabled users to hire sophisticated hackers to target victims and gain access to their private information and take over online accounts. When looking at it this way, the largest markets are primarily drug shops and fraud shops, which you can see in Chainalysis’ graph below. Fraud shops sell malware, stolen credit card numbers, compromised user accounts of many types, and some assist with money laundering. Inspired by the work [36] investigating the supplier migration phenomenon between underground marketplaces, we also evaluated the migrant suppliers who, for the first time, began to trade in a new market, m’, after the closure of marketplace m. To this end, we first collected the marketplace’s lifespan using the Gwern archive [37], as shown in Table 1, and then compared the supplier lists in each marketplace to investigate supplier migration.
Obtaining labels for all the listings has the advantage of allowing us to conduct our analyses for the whole dataset, including the price or individual texts of the listings, which would be more difficult through estimations from a sub-sample. We generated text features from the merged product title and description to train the classifier. We then tokenized the text, removed all English stop words, and stemmed the remaining words. Subsequently, we generated part of speech tags, unigrams, and bigrams, which were weighted with a tf-idf (term frequency-inverse document frequency) score. The python package “nltk” (Bird et al., 2009) was used for all text cleaning and feature generation steps.
Dark markets refer to online marketplaces that operate anonymously, often facilitating the sale of illegal goods and services. These platforms utilize encryption and privacy tools to protect the identities of both buyers and sellers.
The proliferation of ransomware groups, such as Maze, is just one example of the growing marketplace. Some of these groups are actively recruiting hackers in the dark web market to expand their operations and target more organizations. Research conducted by the University of Surry’s Michael McGuire notes that cybercrime yields $1.5 trillion in revenue per year among, which includes $860 million of drugs and weapons sales. In recent years, there have been drastic technology-driven changes in dark web criminal markets.
How Dark Markets Operate
There were 14,000 new users of the site within the first 90 days of its existence. Clearly, Silk Road’s death didn’t kill the demand for illegal darknet markets. As of October 2022, the largest volume of drugs purchased at two large marketplaces – BlackSprut and Mega – were for cathinones such as mephedrone and alpha-PVP. These white, synthetic stimulant powders that mimic cocaine and MDMA are highly prevalent in Russia, eastern Europe and the Balkans because they’re cheap and easy to manufacture locally. You can find all kinds of drugs, chemistry equipment, fraud-related products, tutorials and various other digital products.
- In some countries, simply using the dark web or Tor network is also illegal.
- Police shutdowns have been shown to correlate with a sudden increase in drug listings in coexisting marketplaces16,17.
- The landscape of “loader” malware services is anticipated to continue its evolution, offering increasingly stealthy loaders to cybercriminals.
Over the last year, “Alex,” the drug dealer from Moscow, said a new genre of content has been growing on Russian Telegram profiles. He said the proceeds from ransomware attacks, as well as investment schemes, violent extremism and child sexual abuse material, are also being laundered through Russian darknet markets. And over the last 9 months, using a mix of publicity stunts and crippling cyber attacks on each other, OMG, Kraken and around 10 other darknet markets have been engaged in a tit-for-tat turf war for Hydra’s throne. On New Year’s Eve people in Moscow spotted what looked like an up-and-coming tech startup projecting its logo onto the sides of various buildings.
Dark markets rely on specific technologies and practices that distinguish them from traditional online marketplaces. Here are key elements that characterize their operation:
- Cryptocurrency Payments: Transactions in dark markets are often conducted using cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, which provide a degree of anonymity.
- Onion Routing: Many dark markets are accessible only through the Tor network, which anonymizes user activity.
- Vendor Ratings: Similar to legitimate e-commerce platforms, dark markets allow users to rate vendors, thus creating a feedback system.
Cyble Inc, a threat intelligence provider that helps enterprises protect themselves from cybercrimes. • Gain a situational awareness of cyberthreats and risks introduced by third parties, partners and suppliers. Cybercriminals are increasingly exploiting trust to conduct cyberattacks on their targets. While large organizations have deployed TPCRM capabilities, their confidence level is still quite low. As organizations have rapidly moved to the digitization era, their network boundaries have vanished.
As a result, threat actors have migrated elsewhere, including to forums like “RuTor,” decentralized Telegram-based shops, and even switching to offline transactions for physical commodities like narcotics. As for product feedback, we cannot always know whether they are mandatory and whether the feedback is for a single or bulk purchase. Taking ten random samples for each product category will produce only rough estimates and was only intended to illustrate the estimated difference between prices on darknet markets and the surface web.
Common Goods and Services Provided
Items sold on dark markets can vary widely, but they typically include:
- Illegal drugs
- Stolen data and personal identities
- Weapons and explosives
- Hacking tools and services
- Counterfeit currency and documents
Legal Implications
Engaging in transactions on dark markets presents significant legal risks. Authorities worldwide actively monitor these platforms, leading to:
- Increased law enforcement efforts to shut down operations
- Arrests and prosecutions of individuals involved in the trade
- Legal repercussions for users, even if they are merely browsing
FAQs about Dark Markets
What is a dark market?
A dark market is an online platform that allows users to buy and sell illegal products and services, often anonymously.
How do I access dark markets?
Access typically requires the use of the Tor browser or equivalent privacy-focused tools.
Are all items sold on dark markets illegal?
While many items are illegal, some vendors may sell legal goods, often under the shadow of anonymity and reduced legitimacy.
Can I get caught buying from dark markets?
Yes, law enforcement agencies actively monitor dark markets, and engaging in illegal transactions can lead to investigations and arrests.
Conclusion
The allure of dark markets comes with considerable risks. From legal repercussions to the dangers of fraud and scams, users should approach these platforms with caution. Awareness and understanding of how these marketplaces work can empower individuals to make informed decisions and maintain their safety online.
