Pierluigi Paganini January 12, 2021

The world’s largest black marketplace on the dark web, DarkMarket, has been taken offline by law enforcement in an international operation. 

DarkMarket, the world’s largest black marketplace on the dark web, has been taken offline as a result of an international operation conducted by law enforcement from Germany, Australia, Denmark, Moldova, Ukraine, the United Kingdom (the National Crime Agency), and the USA (DEA, FBI, and IRS) with the support of the Europol.

The figures related to the DarkMarket at the time of the shut down are impressive:

• almost 500 000 users;
• more than 2 400 sellers; 
• over 320 000 transactions;
• more than 4 650 bitcoin and 12 800 Monero transferred. 

The overall transactions, at the current rate, correspond to a sum of more than €140 million.

The marketplace was an important point of aggregation for online cybercriminals that traded all kinds of drugs, counterfeit money, stolen or counterfeit credit card details, anonymous SIM cards and malware.

During the weekend, the German operation led the operation, Police in the city of Oldenburg arrested a 34-year-old Australian national who is the alleged operator of the DarkMarket.

The man believed to operate it near Germany’s border with Denmark, the police also seized more than 20 servers used by the suspect in Moldova and Ukraine. 

“The investigation, which was led by the cybercrime unit of the Koblenz Public Prosecutor’s Office, allowed officers to locate and close the marketplace, switch off the servers and seize the criminal infrastructure – more than 20 servers in Moldova and Ukraine supported by the German Federal Criminal Police office (BKA). The stored data will give investigators new leads to further investigate moderators, sellers, and buyers.” reads the press release published by the Europol.

The investigation is still ongoing, data obtained as the result of the operation will be used to launch news probes again people involved the the activity of the marketplace.

“Investigators expect to use the data saved there to launch new probes against the moderators, sellers and buyers of the marketplace,” prosecutors said.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, DarkWeb)

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