Recently, the police struck a huge blow against criminals active on the Darknet worldwide with over 170 arrests in six countries. Jamie Collier, an analyst at Mandiant Threat Intelligence (a FireEye unit), commented.
“Numerous groups and individuals are active on marketplaces in the Darknet. The latest arrests show that the Darknet makes it easier to sell drugs and weapons - but there is an even larger criminal community present there. For example, it is also popular with cyber criminals for financially motivated cyber attacks to conduct business. Hackers also sell variants of malware, stolen data and access to compromised networks of their victims.
Anonymous communities
Jamie Collier, analyst at Mandiant Threat Intelligence (Source: FireEye).
Building trust is a top priority in these anonymous communities. Even if real names or profile pictures are not used on the marketplaces, people can still build a good reputation through pseudonyms, positive sales reviews and participation in trustworthy payment trust systems. In spite of their illegal activities, the communities follow many traditional market mechanisms.
There are certainly regionally oriented marketplaces, but the criminal ecosystem of the Darknet does not stop at national borders. This makes an international approach to law enforcement essential. It only makes sense, then, that many of the darknet-related arrests stem from international cooperation between law enforcement agencies around the world.
Darknet marketplaces are resilient
These recent arrests in multiple countries are sure to disrupt criminal activity, at least in the short term. Nevertheless, the marketplaces on the darknet have proven to be remarkably resilient in the past. The financial returns associated with illegal goods and services create attractive incentives for the resumption of criminal activity. One possible consequence, however, is that actors will switch to more closed marketplaces, restricted to a smaller and more trustworthy community of buyers and sellers.
Law enforcement agencies have evidently stepped up their engagement in recent years. The mobility of these marketplaces, however, presents a challenge for those who want to keep up with the speed of the threat. "
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