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At the time, AlphaBay was considered to be one of the most popular and comprehensive darknet marketplaces, selling a wide array of illicit and illegal products and services. This operation to seize the AlphaBay site coincides with efforts by Dutch law enforcement to investigate and take down the Hansa Market, another prominent dark web market. Like AlphaBay, Hansa Market was used to facilitate the sale of illegal drugs, toxic chemicals, malware, counterfeit identification documents, and illegal services. The administrators of Hansa Market, along with its thousands of vendors and users, also attempted to mask their identities to avoid prosecution through the use of Tor and digital currency.
In addition we want to use our experience in counter-surveillance, counter-signal intelligence and operational security knowledge to teach users, vendors and future darknet admins what they could do to keep themselves and their lives free from Law Enforcement. Most of AlphaBays’ staff surviving the raids few years back is proof we know what we are talking about. While DarkOwl generally avoids engaging in or commenting on speculative darknet drama, there are several things about the re-emergence of AlphaBay and DeSnake that don’t add up. 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.
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AlphaBay boasts with unmatched reputation and good-standing within the darknet community. We have always been transparent, professional and fair to every party involved that is why we were the preferred place of business by hundreds of thousands of buyers and vendors. Unlike any other marketplaces we actually have a vision for the future which involves an improvement for the darknet market scene as a whole .
Solving captcha is a daunting task to many, especially newbies on the dark space. AlphaBay Featured ListingFour years after the market went down, the Market’s former customers and vendors got a reason to smile. One of AlphaBay’s administrators, DeSnake, released a PGP-signed statement on the Dread darknet forum. DeSnake , one of original AlphaBay’s administrators could not help, but bring back to life the former dark web giant. The message contained information about the intended relaunching of AlphaBay marketplace.
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Digital Contracts – Alphabay market was the first ever darknet market to integrate digital contracts on their platform. It’s a simple PGP-signed contract which can be initiated by anyone on the platform for a negligible fee. It uses PGP encryption to verify the authenticity of the contract, and at time of any dispute, all the clauses alongside the terms & conditions of the contract are verified by Alphabay team/moderators and a verdict is given out. I’m very curious to see over the coming days and weeks how users react to the news. The drug community is naturally a little bit more skittish than the fraud community, and I think we will see them more openly discuss their intentions for next steps.
A senior member from the carding community Ranklez claimed he had evidence to suggest Cazes wasn’t alpha02. Ranklez and alpha02 had a history in the carding community as Ranklez sold alpha02 fullz for conducting identity theft. U.S. law enforcement also worked with numerous foreign partners to freeze and preserve millions of dollars in cryptocurrency representing the proceeds of AlphaBay’s illegal activities. 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. Five years after it was torn offline, the resurrected dark web marketplace is clawing its way back to the top of the online underworld.
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. Vendor Shared Account Access allows vendors to permit their employees or partners to take your role on the platform, e.g. reply to messages, perform orders, and do other stuff. All of these features could be enough to call it a decent marketplace. Yet, it wouldn’t be the AlphaBay we know and respect if it didn’t offer a variety of its own unique solutions. Sellers become eligible for the FE status only after they prove that they are trustworthy.
- AlphaBay started in 2014 and it became the largest darknet market.
- Businesses have had limited time to become acquainted with AlphaBay 2.0 as of yet (DeSnake says it is the same market, not “2.0”).
- It is used between buyer and seller as they send propositions in case of disputes.
- When authorities carried out the warrant and arrest in his apartment in Bangkok, his laptop was left unencrypted and the admin account for the market and server logged in.
- The young Canadian Cazes accused of masterminding AlphaBay, the world’s leading “darknet” internet marketplace, lived an apparently quiet life for nearly two years with his Thai girlfriend in a middle-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Bangkok.
Alpha02/Admin was eventually identified as Alexandre Cazes, a Canadian citizen who was found dead in his cell shortly after his arrest in Thailand in 2017. Especially when using any public WiFi hotspots you should always use a VPN when accessing the Internet since you don’t know whether the access point is compromised. A VPN ensures that all of your traffic, no matter what application, will always be strongly encrypted when passing the access point, this protecting yourself not only from eavesdropping but also possible identity theft. For additional system security, we recommend you run a secure operating system like Tails or Whonix on your dedicated system for darknet activities. We also recommend using a VPN as an additional security measure since TOR will only anonymize your browsing sessions but not other traffic.
AlphaBay, Hansa, and many other darknet markets were closed during the Operation Bayonet that was successfully carried out by the joined efforts of the United States, Canada, Netherlands, and Thailand during spring and summer of 2017. Unfortunately, this story doesn’t have a happy ending, Alexandre Cazes was found dead in his cell soon after he was arrested. Some people claim it was a suicide, some suspect that the death was staged.
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Falling short may be DeSnakes push to adopt I2P as an alternative to Tor – it has not had the impact on the marketplace landscape as expected. Other marketplaces, including Bohemia and Libertas, have since attempted to stand up I2P mirrors, though the adoption by users and vendors seems slow and unenthusiastic. “Tracers in the Dark” shows that there is hope in stopping drug dealers, dark web market kingpins and child abusers given the sheer number of successful busts, takedowns and arrests, from Silk Road to AlphaBay. And it’s all thanks to the immutable, persistent nature of the Bitcoin blockchain, the perfect place to follow the money. Falling short may be DeSnake’s push to adopt I2P as an alternative to Tor, as it has not had the impact on the marketplace landscape as expected. Today’s version of AlphaBay experienced a relatively slow start, as vendors and buyers questioned the nature of this relaunch, wary of law enforcement involvement.
Cazes and his wife amassed numerous high value assets, including luxury vehicles, residences and a hotel in Thailand. Cazes also possessed millions of dollars in cryptocurrency, which has been seized by the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration . “Suspected AlphaBay founder dies in Bangkok jail after shutdown of online black market”. Cazes used a pseudonym, Alpha02, to run the site which he had previously used (e.g., in carding and tech forums) since at least 2008, and variously advertised this identity as the “designer”, “administrator” and “owner” of the site.
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The contract system allows users to make engagements and agree to provide services in the future, according to the terms of the contract. AlphaBay’s alleged founder, Alexandre Cazes, was arrested on drug and money laundering charges earlier this month in Thailand, where he was later found dead in Thai custody. The Justice Department says it appears Cazes “took his own life.” He committed suicide in custody an hour before a meeting with a lawyer to discuss his extradition to Canada.
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The command post was the central hub for information exchange during the AlphaBay operation. DeSnake tells WIRED, however, that he’s developed a few forms of protection that give him confidence he’ll continue to stay a step ahead of the feds. Perhaps most importantly, he claims to be based in a former Soviet country that has no extradition treaty with the US. His choice for AlphaBay to use only Monero, rather than Bitcoin, may make the sort of blockchain analysis that contributed to the original site’s takedown far more difficult. And he claims to have built complex technical protections that include redundant infrastructure in multiple countries, along with a system called AlphaGuard that’s designed to automatically relaunch the site on new servers in the case of a bust. “We will be back and running within a few days and without a cent lost,” DeSnake says.