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The criminal groups that developed the malware gets a cut of the affiliates’ earnings, typically between 20% and 30%. The dark web is part of the internet that isn’t visible to search engines and requires the use of an anonymizing browser called Tor to be accessed. In this report Kaspersky researchers provide an analysis of the previously unknown HrServ web shell, which exhibits both APT and crimeware features and has likely been active since 2021. Moreover, the rise in the popularity of other cryptocurrencies with enhanced privacy features might also influence the Bitcoin mixer market. Service providers could diversify their offerings to include mixing for these alternative cryptocurrencies, further expanding the scope of their operations. With cybercrime expertise at a premium, and cybercrime tools like generative AI chatbots becoming more sophisticated every day, we could see an explosion of automated cybercrime over the coming years.
Personal Finance
Understanding the Value on Darknet Markets
These vendors had more than $140 million in revenue over an eight-month period. It is common to hear news reports about large data breaches, but what happens once your personal data is stolen? Our research shows that, like most legal commodities, stolen data products flow through a supply chain consisting of producers, wholesalers, and consumers. But this supply chain involves the interconnection of multiple criminal organizations operating in illicit underground marketplaces. Dark Net Markets are online cyber criminal platforms used for advertising, buying and selling illegal goods including a significant number of cybersecurity-related tools.
Drugs – The most commonly sold illegal products on darknet markets are drugs, particularly opioids, cocaine, and methamphetamine. Vendors on these markets use clever marketing tactics to attract buyers, including offering free samples and discounts for bulk purchases. Data protection, privacy, and legal information form another necessary category of trust factors. Registration data, legal documents, and guidelines indicating buyer and seller rights and obligations are also listed here (Karimov & Brengman, 2014). Providing information on privacy protection is essential for legally operating web markets.
The darknet markets represent a shadowy ecosystem where a wide range of goods and services can be exchanged. Understanding how much value is on the darknet markets involves examining various facets, including the types of products available, their prices, and the overall economic influence of these markets.
The content of darknets makes up the dark web — Silk Road was the first modern dark web marketplace. As prepaid gift cards can be purchased using cryptocurrency, they can also be abused by criminals to cash out illicit funds. After buying gift cards from an online service with proceeds from crime, an illicit actor can then use the cards to acquire a wide range of consumer goods from mainstream e-commerce platforms and physical stores. For example, one of the accused parties behind the Bitfinex hack allegedly spent a portion of the stolen funds on a USD 500 Walmart gift card. For example, TRM Labs has identified a DNM vendor using illicit funds made from the sale of drugs to purchase cloud mining accounts.
Law enforcement was able to track him through cryptocurrency transfers to wallets that were linked to his name, then forensics law enforcement was able to link those transfers to his verified identity for his Bitcoin wallet and capture him. The increased law enforcement activities of the past year are changing the landscape of cybercrime—one of the dark web trends about which we can all be happy. What kinds of services are darknet marketplace vendors and their customers using to facilitate these activities? Below, we break down the services sending cryptocurrency to darknet markets by volume.
Types of Goods and Services
Since the classifier received additional information from the product description, which was not available to the annotators, it is possible that mismatches between the annotations and product descriptions led to more misclassifications in the category “Other”. For example, some custom orders might have similar descriptions as other counterfeits. Besides custom orders, the category “Other” also included guides, instructions, counterfeit art (e.g., paintings), or cars. Strong security features like 2FA/PGP (mandatory for vendors) and PGP encrypted messages between vendors/buyers and staff members.
Darknet markets offer an array of items, which can be broadly categorized into:
- Drugs: The most commonly traded items, ranging from recreational to prescription medications.
- Fraudulent items: Including stolen credit cards, personal information, and counterfeit documents.
- Weapons: Illegal firearms and ammunition are often available, posing significant risks.
- Services: Hacking services, money laundering, and various forms of assistance for illegal activities.
- Data: Information stolen from breaches, often sold to the highest bidder.
Inspired by previous research (Wegberg et al., 2018), we used the annotated listings to train a multiclass classifier to predict the labels of the remaining unlabeled counterfeits. Obtaining labels for all the listings has the advantage of allowing us to conduct our analyses for the whole dataset, including the price or individual texts of the listings, which would be more difficult through estimations from a sub-sample. We generated text features from the merged product title and description to train the classifier. We then tokenized the text, removed all English stop words, and stemmed the remaining words. Subsequently, we generated part of speech tags, unigrams, and bigrams, which were weighted with a tf-idf (term frequency-inverse document frequency) score. The python package “nltk” (Bird et al., 2009) was used for all text cleaning and feature generation steps.
Economic Overview
Determining how much value is on the darknet markets requires analyzing economic factors, including:
- Market Size: Estimates suggest that darknet markets generate billions of dollars annually, with reports indicating anywhere from $1 billion to over $4 billion.
- User Base: A vast number of users engage in these markets, which facilitate a steady flow of transactions.
- Cryptocurrency Transactions: Most transactions are conducted using cryptocurrencies, notably Bitcoin, which provides anonymity and security for users.
Price Fluctuations
Prices on darknet markets can vary drastically based on:
- Demand and Supply: High demand for certain products like narcotics can significantly increase prices.
- Quality: The purity or efficacy of drugs affects pricing, influencing buyer choices.
- Geographic Location: Availability of products may vary by region, impacting costs.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the estimated annual revenue of darknet markets?
- Throughout 2022, we observed a negative relationship between funds sent to regular darknet markets and those sent to single vendor shops.
- DarkOwl has assigned assets to monitoring and collecting data from the new AlphaBay Marketplace, despite their increased crawler detection measures and ongoing server instability.
- Similar to the above chart, the following data compares the price index on Dark Web for forged documents.
- The Silk Road defined its name based on the historical network of trade routes between Asia, the Middle East, East Africa, and Europe.
The estimated annual revenue can range anywhere from $1 billion to $4 billion, depending on various reports and studies.
Why do people buy from darknet markets?
People engage with darknet markets for various reasons, including the availability of illegal goods, anonymity, and often lower prices for certain items compared to traditional markets.
How do cryptocurrencies influence value on darknet markets?
Cryptocurrencies provide a layer of anonymity that traditional currencies do not, making them the preferred method for transactions on darknet markets.
Are darknet markets safe to use?
Using darknet markets carries significant risks including potential legal consequences, scams, and exposure to dangerous products. Due diligence is critical for users.
Closing Insights
Investigating how much value is on the darknet markets reveals a complex web of economic activity shrouded in anonymity and illicit practices. As long as there is demand, these markets are likely to continue their operations, fueled by technological advances and the enduring quest for privacy in transactions.
