A globe-spanning group of law enforcement agencies took down DarkMarket, an underground dark web marketplace. The European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) announced the successful operation on Jan.12. DarkMarket was a hub for threat actors to buy and sell counterfeit products. Stolen credit card details and malware were up for grabs, as well as other illicit goods and services.

At the time of the takedown, DarkMarket was the world’s largest illegal dark web marketplace with about 500,000 users and 2,400 sellers. Its more than 320,000 sales involved over 4,650 bitcoin (worth about $157 million) and 12,800 Monero (about $1.8 million).

Dark Market Operator Arrested

The takedown became possible after an arrest by the Central Criminal Investigation Department in Oldenburg, Germany. They seized an Australian citizen who was the alleged operator of DarkMarket near the German-Danish border, Europol says. 

The cyber crime unit of the Koblenz Public Prosecutor’s Office then launched an investigation into this person and their dark web marketplace. This effort enabled officers to shut down the marketplace. They seized over 20 of its servers located in Moldova and Ukraine.

Europol organized information exchange and provided specialist support. The agency says the international partners planned on using the data stored on those servers to go after the site’s moderators, sellers and buyers.

Other Dark Web Marketplace Stings 

Law enforcement agencies across the world seized several dark web markets over the past few years.

For instance, the FBI worked with digital crime investigators, as well as European law enforcement to obtain a warrant for the seizure of dark web index Deep Dot Web in May 2019. Law enforcement agencies based in Israel, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Brazil made arrests as part of the takedown.

A few months later, the U.S. Justice Department announced the indictment of a South Korean national for running Welcome to Video, then the largest dark web child abuse website. IRS Criminal Investigation first seized Welcome to Video’s servers in 2018. Following this, law enforcement in the U.S. and 11 other countries arrested and filed charges against 337 of the site’s users.

In addition, law enforcement arrested 179 people, seized 500 kilograms of illegal drugs and confiscated $6.5 million in funds in September 2020 in a dark web marketplace takedown.

How to Prevent Your Data from Ending up on the Dark Web

Law enforcement agencies across the world continue to prosecute criminals who hide in the dark web. These threat actors also continue to use the dark web to prey upon everyday users.

Keeping this in mind, it’s important that businesses and other online entities work to keep their sensitive data off a dark web marketplace. The first thing they should consider doing is applying encryption to their data. Doing so will not only help them comply with a number of data protection rules. It will also help them render their data useless if it ends up on a dark web marketplace like DarkMarket.

From there, undo the silo in which data security resides. Data defense needs to function as part of a broader landscape. This itself will help keep that data safe. With that in mind, organizations can work to automate and manage their data security workflows across all departments.

More from News

$10.3 Billion in Cyber Crime Losses Shatters Previous Totals

4 min read - The introduction of the most recent FBI Internet Crime Report says, “At the FBI, we know ‘cyber risk is business risk’ and ‘cybersecurity is national security.’” And the numbers in the report back up this statement. The FBI report details more than 800,000 cyber crime-related complaints filed in 2022. Meanwhile, total losses were over $10 billion, shattering 2021's total of $6.9 billion, according to the bureau’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).  Top Five Cyber Crime TypesIn the past five years, the…

4 min read

HHS Releases Hospital Cyber Resiliency Landscape Analysis

4 min read - On April 17, 2023, The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) 405(d) Program announced the release of its Hospital Cyber Resiliency Initiative Landscape Analysis. This landmark analysis reports on domestic hospitals’ current state of cybersecurity preparedness. The scope of the HHS study was limited to activities that protect access to patient care and safety and reduce the negative impact of cyber threats on clinical operations. Breaches of sensitive data were considered only if the breach had a direct…

4 min read

Zombie APIs are a Top Security Concern as API Attacks Surge 400%

4 min read - Organizations of all sizes rely on application programming interfaces (APIs). The API explosion has been driven by several factors, including cloud computing, demand for mobile/web applications, microservices architecture and the API economy as a business model. APIs enable developers to access data remotely, integrate with other services, build modular applications and monetize their data/services. For enterprises that participated in a recent research study, the average number of APIs per organization was 15,564. Large enterprises (over 10,000 employees) had an average…

4 min read

Google’s Bug Bounty Hits $12 Million: What About the Risks?

4 min read - Bug bounty numbers have never been better. In 2022, Google rewarded the efforts of over 700 researchers from 68 different countries who helped improve the security of the company’s products and services. The total amount of awards grew from $8.7 million paid in 2021 to $12 million in 2022, a nearly 38% increase. Over the past few years, bug bounty programs have gained significant traction. Companies have been lured in by the potential to identify vulnerabilities quickly, enhance product security…

4 min read