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How a Huge Online Drug Crackdown Actually Helped Web Dealers
Irony alert: A month after the feds' massive sweep, business is better than ever on dark net marketplaces
Author: Eric Markowitz Posted: 12/17/14
Last month, law enforcement agencies from 16 countries, including the FBI, carried out the largest cyber drug bust in history. They shut down hundreds of black-market sites, arrested 17 people and seized more than a million bucks in cash, silver and gold.
The most prominent website they put out of business was Silk Road 2.0, a clone of the original Silk Road (which shut down in 2013). Silk Road 2.0 had thousands of listings and hundreds of vendors. “The criminals can run but they can’t hide,” the head of the European Cybercrime Centre said in a statement at the time.
But most of these criminals don’t appear to be doing any running at all. In fact, they never needed to. A recent report by Centient, a London-based cyber security firm that tracks the dark net, found that the shutdown may have actually increased the number of drugs being sold online. “Despite the success of the operation,” Centient explains, “the surviving marketplaces have grown and the overall market size is now bigger than before the law enforcement actions.”
Why? Well, first off, the authorities didn’t actually shut down the two biggest sites, Evolution and Agora. These sites are like Amazon for illegal goods—easy to navigate and simple to use with thousands of products listed for sale.
According to Centient, a week after the bust, there was a 20 percent increase in the number of products being sold on Evolution and a 27 percent increase on Agora. Apparently, sellers on sites that had been shut down were just moving over to Evolution and Agora, sort of like an eBay seller deciding to sell on Etsy instead.
continued here http://www.vocativ.com/underworld/drugs/online-drugs-silk-road-evolution-agora/
Irony alert: A month after the feds' massive sweep, business is better than ever on dark net marketplaces
Author: Eric Markowitz Posted: 12/17/14
Last month, law enforcement agencies from 16 countries, including the FBI, carried out the largest cyber drug bust in history. They shut down hundreds of black-market sites, arrested 17 people and seized more than a million bucks in cash, silver and gold.
The most prominent website they put out of business was Silk Road 2.0, a clone of the original Silk Road (which shut down in 2013). Silk Road 2.0 had thousands of listings and hundreds of vendors. “The criminals can run but they can’t hide,” the head of the European Cybercrime Centre said in a statement at the time.
But most of these criminals don’t appear to be doing any running at all. In fact, they never needed to. A recent report by Centient, a London-based cyber security firm that tracks the dark net, found that the shutdown may have actually increased the number of drugs being sold online. “Despite the success of the operation,” Centient explains, “the surviving marketplaces have grown and the overall market size is now bigger than before the law enforcement actions.”
Why? Well, first off, the authorities didn’t actually shut down the two biggest sites, Evolution and Agora. These sites are like Amazon for illegal goods—easy to navigate and simple to use with thousands of products listed for sale.
According to Centient, a week after the bust, there was a 20 percent increase in the number of products being sold on Evolution and a 27 percent increase on Agora. Apparently, sellers on sites that had been shut down were just moving over to Evolution and Agora, sort of like an eBay seller deciding to sell on Etsy instead.
continued here http://www.vocativ.com/underworld/drugs/online-drugs-silk-road-evolution-agora/
