Over 400 illegal dark web sites brought down by international law enforcement sting

Earlier this month, American and European law enforcement agencies rejoiced over a hefty catch that brought down Silk Road 2, the successor to Robert Ulrich’s online drug market place, along with 414 other dark web sites conducting illegal activities on the Tor network. Included in the haul were Cloud 9, Hydra, Blue Sky, Pandora, Topix, Flugsvamp, Cannabis Road, and Black Market, along with the money laundering sites Cash Machine, Cash Flow, Golden Nugget, and Fast Cash.

The outcome of “Operation Onymous,” as the venture was called, also resulted in the arrest the notorious Blake Benthall, the Silk Roads 2 kingpin, and six Britons, including a 19-year-old from New Waltham and a 58-year-old couple from Aberdovey, Wales. A total of $1 million in bitcoins, $250,000 in cash, and an assortment of computer hardware, drugs, gold, silver, and unmarked weapons were seized.

The operation’s completion signifies what experts predicted a year earlier, that shutting down Robert Ulrich’s Silk Road would have minimal impact on cybercrime situated in dark web, as others would simply rush to fill the vacancy left by his detention.  This is because the dark web operates in an even deeper level of the deep web — the part of the Internet untouched by search engines — that’s only accessible using Tor. Web traffic moving through Tor is encrypted through multiple connection points, effectively making it impossible to track the location of servers hosted in this part of the Internet or of users accessing content. In others, there’s nothing stopping new markets from sprouting. 

Shown above; a summary of the web to deep web relation

“Operation Onymous” may signify that authorities have devised some new methods for tracking down the origin of networks hosted through Tor. Professor Alan Woodward, a security consultant from University of Surrey, believes the takedown represents a new era of crime fighting. “Tor has long been considered beyond the reach of law enforcement. This action proves that it is neither invisible nor untouchable,” he said.

An interesting fact to recount is that Tor was actually developed by US Naval Research Laboratory employees as a means of protecting the online communications of U.S. intelligence operatives and to aid people living under repressive regimes. There are approximately three million Tor users worldwide, including militaries, law enforcement officers, journalist who need to protect whistleblowers, and privacy advocates. The message is obvious: the dark web is not all about illegal activities; however, the benefits that make Tor useful to the “good guys,” can obviously do the same for the “bad guys.”

Source BBC