The Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Europol shut down 410 hidden web domains, while also arresting 17 suspects and seizing approximately $1 million worth of bitcoin. This was part of a collaborative international operation aimed at the The Onion Router (Tor) network, a platform that permits individuals to use the Internet anonymously.
These black market websites have been known to sell underground weapons, drugs and other illicit merchandise. The 18-nation sweep, including Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Finland, France and Germany, also involved closing down Silk Road 2.0, a resurrection of the initial illegal goods website.
U.S. prosecutors arrested Blake Benthall, who has been accused of operating the website, and was charged with allowing users to purchase and sell drugs and other illicit products. Using the peer-to-peer decentralized digital currency bitcoin, anonymous Silk Road 2.0 customers were able to acquire heroin, LSD, fake passports and computer-hacking services.
According to court documents, the website maintained more than 13,000 listings for drugs, such as psychedelics (1,783), cannabis (1,707), opioids (379) and ectasy (1,697).
Individuals can simply hide their Internet Protocol addresses through Tor by directing traffic through an array of servers. It is estimated that the anonymous element of the Internet, also known as the deep web, is roughly 500 times the size of the surface web.
“Today we have demonstrated that, together, we are able to efficiently remove vital criminal infrastructures that are supporting serious organised crime,” said Troels Oerting, head of Europol’s European cybercrime centre, in a statement Friday. “And we are not ‘just’ removing these services from the open internet; this time we have also hit services on the dark net using Tor where, for a long time, criminals have considered themselves beyond reach.”
Although law enforcement officials say this is a message to the hidden web that they are being tracked, authorities did not dismiss the possibility that other copycat websites will appear in the near future.
Benthall, who maintained the alias Defcon, is scheduled to appear in federal court Thursday in San Francisco.
