a decade ago, US law enforcement was content to crush a black market for drugs on the dark web and send its dealers and buyers to the next largest anonymous online bazaar on their list. Now, an extensive set of takedowns around the world have revealed how those researchers are casting a much wider net, one that not only targets dark web administrators but also mines their databases for clues. to relentlessly track down and arrest hundreds of merchants from those markets around. the world.
Today, the US Department of Justice, Europol and a list of law enforcement agencies in at least nine countries around the world, from Brazil to Poland, revealed Operation SpecTor, a collection of dark web investigations. which led to the arrest of 288 people worldwide: 153 of them. who were in the US Officials also announced the seizure of nearly a ton of drugs, $53 million in cash and cryptocurrency, and 117 firearms. Europol simultaneously revealed that German police had taken down the dark web marketplace Monopoly Market, which had gone offline in late 2021 under mysterious circumstances, leaving many of its users wondering if the marketplace’s administrators had run an “exit scam” on it. the one that absconds with the funds of the users.
In Operation SpecTor, investigators appear to have harnessed information obtained through the seizure of Monopoly servers and data from other dark web market takedowns in recent years to find leads on hundreds of web drug dealers. obscura, and even its clients, on an unprecedented scale. “This represents the largest amount of funds seized and the largest number of arrests in any coordinated international action led by the Department of Justice against drug traffickers on the dark web,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland told reporters. in a press conference. “The Department of Justice is cracking down on criminal cryptocurrency transactions and the online criminal marketplaces that enable them.”
Along with Monopoly, Operation SpecTor appears to have exploited information gleaned from previous takedowns of the dark web as well. In his statement, Garland referred to both the Hydra takedown, a Russia-based marketplace that served as a massive hub for online drug sales and money laundering, and the dark web’s smallest black market, Genesis, which focused on cybercrime products and services. But the Monopoly takedown, in particular, was kept under wraps for over a year as law enforcement agencies around the world followed leads in the case: europol statement it notes that the “target packages” were “created by cross-comparing and analyzing data and evidence collected” from the Monopoly infrastructure seizure.
All of that points to the growing exploitation by law enforcement of the bonanza of evidence gleaned from dark web takedowns. This has allowed them to carry out far-reaching raids on the dark web’s most prolific dealers, who are often active in multiple markets. cryptocurrency tracking it has also played a central role in expanding the objectives of such operations. Databases of transactions obtained in dark raids, if they can be cracked, offer starting points for cryptocurrency trackers, who can then follow the money through blockchains to the cryptocurrency exchanges where the profits have been cashed out. of drugs, and they can often be cited for users. ‘identifying information.
“In fact, the arrests are likely related to the data from all the different takedowns,” says a former law enforcement officer involved in dark web raids, who asked not to be named. “Law enforcement combines all the information from the different seized data sets to identify high-value targets. And if you identify the addresses of cryptocurrency wallets, you can often link the activities in the different markets, and the cryptocurrency exchanges may have the missing “know-your-customer” information you’re looking for.” Previous busts of web marketplaces obscure in recent years, including AlphaBay, HansaWall Street Market and Dark Market, the agents got that kind of historical database in each case, opening up a whole host of new leads.
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