AlphaBay’s creator and administrator, Alexandre Cazes—who went by the names Alpha02 and Admin online—was arrested by Thai authorities on behalf of the U.S. on July 5, 2017. A week later, Cazes apparently took his own life while in custody in Thailand. “Notorious AlphaBay darknet market comes back to life”. The intelligence yielded by the Hansa operation “has given us a new insight into the criminal activity of the darknet, including many of its leading figures,” Wainwright said. “Don’t be stupid and hop on the next big market,” one user wrote on the Reddit discussion forum where users openly trade tips on dark Web markets.
If for some reason, at any given time ADR does not work for you and you can not reach an agreement or simply refuse to use it at all, there is always an available moderator to look into it in less than 24 hours. AlphaBay has been relaunched by DeSnake in August 2021 with a new design but with the same admin as before, and is once again plan to become the biggest darknet market in history. AlphaGuard which protects wallets of both buyers and vendors in case of police raids on all servers by giving them opportunity to finish escrows, disputes and withdraw funds. This part of the site is supposed to become a shelter for everyone who wants to speak freely and discuss any topic, including hacking, anonymity, fraud/carding, drugs safety, or malware. Creating private sub-communities, such as the famous VXcode, is also permitted and even encouraged.
Deep Dark Web
Many buyers and sellers decided to choose Empire as their new shelter for illegal activities, but some administrators betrayed their trust and pulled out the exit scam that cost its users a million dollar damage. White House Market with its advanced security features and wide product range managed to retain the predominant position, but on the 1st of October 2021 they announced their peaceful retirement. When equipped with Flashpoint Intelligence, you have access to collections across illicit online communities ranging from private forums and illicit marketplaces to encrypted chat services channels to gain insight into threat-actor activity on a global scale. Each market category has subcategories and several related items are offered for sale on each, making AlphaBay one of the most popular and unique dark web marketplaces since it operates both as a classic marketplace and a data store. This makes it valuable for both conventional crime and cybercrime actors.
- For U.S. law enforcement agencies, dismantling the criminal dark web has taken on added urgency in recent years amid a deadly opioid epidemic that feeds off these sites.
- Even Reddit users on the surface web have mixed feedback.
- People thought that Dream Market was going to take the crown, but its administrator and a very productive vendor Gal Vallerius was arrested within a month after the Operation Bayonet was over.
- Third to all who keep silent and refuse to cooperate when LE asking, we saw who are real and who rolled over visible from the given sentences.
Still, it heavily focuses on I2P rather than Tor Network basically for security purposes. If the vendor does not respond, the customer gets compensation. Our advise is to only do business with reputable merchants that have a track record of success.
Alphabay Summary
“The takedown of AlphaBay is significant, but it’s a bit of a whac-a-mole,” said Frank Cilluffo, director of the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University. The move struck a blow to an international drug trade that has increasingly moved online in recent years, though some experts thought its impact would be limited. Unfortunately, DeSnake’s contributions written in a mixture of English and Russian backfired and senior members of XSS berated them for their lack of operational security and inability to properly understand the dynamics of the Russian language. The year of 2021 has seen the rise of alternative social media platforms.
The attack was from a single hacker who was paid by AlphaBay for the disclosure. AlphaBay reported that the exploit had only been used in conjunction with this attack and not used previously. U-47700, a synthetic opioid, revealed that the drugs were purchased on AlphaBay from Khelborod and Barrero.
Dark Web Monitoring
AlphaBay historically had a vocal and persistence presence on Darknet Market Avengers forum which unfortunately, has been offline for several weeks. There are no new threads mentioning AlphaBay’s return on The Hub. Other listings – such as doxxing tools, gold, invites to invite-only Genesis marketplace, Binance accounts, password databases, and more. The operation to seize AlphaBay’s servers was led by the FBI and involved the cooperative efforts of law enforcement agencies in Thailand, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Canada, the United Kingdom, and France, along with the European law enforcement agency Europol.
Now over four years later, Alphabay has allegedly returned as the original AB admin “Desnake” has ostensibly ‘proven control’ over the AB administrators’ PGP key. AlphaBay is a legendary dark web marketplace which was by the FBI’s own words the biggest darknet marketplace to have ever existed. The platform was shutdown in 2017 by authorities during Operation Bayonet but they were unable to capture many of the staff members including its co-founder and security administrator DeSnake. When AlphaBay became inaccessible as a result, thousands of its buyers and vendors flocked to the then law enforcement-ran Hansa market to continue their operations.
Dead Markets
DeSnake, meanwhile, maintained both on Dread and to WIRED that he doesn’t have any personal or professional connection to threesixty, the hacker whose vulnerability discovery took down AlphaBay’s largest remaining competitor. “We handled it the best possible way, due to the severity of the issue,” DeSnake says. The seizure and civil forfeiture of three former drug houses in Rutland, Vermont is helping to restore a community hit hard by the opioid epidemic. “Thailand seizes $21 million in assets from dead founder of dark net marketplace AlphaBay”. “Suspected AlphaBay founder dies in Bangkok jail after shutdown of online black market”. 5 July 2017Canadian police raid EBX Technologies in Montreal, Cazes’ Canadian company and the reported location of the physical servers, as well as two residential properties in Trois-Rivières.
We are professionally-run, anonymous, secure marketplace with a track record like no other marketplace out there – dead or alive. From management to Staff to the technology behind AlphaBay to our bulletproof servers we have the very best. With the protection from a system like AlphaGuard which no other marketplace has, we are clearly a choice for those who have stability and security as their priorities. Regardless of the security features of Monero, for the safety of our customers AlphaBay runs an internal mixer which guarantees that any of your monero coins will not be linked to you.
AlphaBay’s marketplace and forum are also available on the darknet I2P. When AlphaBay first reappeared, Gray and other dark web analysts and users expressed suspicion that DeSnake might be compromised by law enforcement. As part of the site’s relaunch, multiple new features have been advertised and new rules announced. Notable among new features are AlphaGuard , an automatic system to resolve disputes between buyers and sellers, exclusive use of Monero wallets, and the offering of I2P mirrors. Concerning rules, items newly prohibited from sale include COVID-19 vaccines, firearms, products containing the narcotic fentanyl, pornography, and “hitman services”.