We can see this pattern on the chart below, which shows the level of market share controlled by the dominant market of each epoch. The recovery pattern is fairly consistent until the Hydra Marketplace closure, after which no dominant darknet market emerged. Like the vast majority of all darknet market users, former Hydra counterparties across all categories — both retail drug buyers and criminal users — transacted almost exclusively with OMG during the OMG dominance period. In the post-OMG dominance period, OMG retained a number of those former Hydra counterparties, but lost a significant share of their illicit activity to the other two markets across all categories.
The 2023 Crypto Crime Report
STYX Market focuses specifically on financial fraud, making it a go-to destination for cybercriminals engaged in this activity. In 2022 and Q dark web markets continued to bloom with a multitude of listings of various illegal goods and services. The increased use of the dark web is also a boon to cyber extortionists, who feed off traffic to their data leak portals and work to build relationships with the mainstream media.
Average Number Of Tor Users Per Day
International authorities collaborated to shut down one of the largest dark web marketplaces, DarkMarket, in 2021, which led to the arrest of 150 alleged drug vendors. The dark web, accessible only through special software like Tor, constitutes a small fraction of the deep web and hosts a substantial share of illegal activity. In 2023, it averaged 2.5 million daily visitors, rising to 2.7 million by April 2023. Germany led in Tor usage, followed by the U.S., Finland, India, and Russia.
Notes Of Cyber Inspector: Three Clusters Of Threat In Cyberspace
- Today’s biggest cyber threats aren’t exactly the same as they were yesterday or will be tomorrow.
- We showed that a small fraction of traders is responsible for a large fraction of the trading volume, and by analysing the networks of buyers and sellers, we found different resilience regimes.
- Whilst a great many products are sold, drugs dominate the numbers of listings, with the drugs including cannabis, MDMA, modafinil,108109110 LSD, cocaine, and designer drugs.
- The resulting data set includes for each transaction the source and destination entities, the time, and the value of the transaction.
This ensures credit reporting agencies will not provide your credit report if anyone tries to open a new loan or credit card account in your name.6. Add additional challenges for financial accounts and mobile providers wherever possible. Add additional authentication steps, enable challenge questions, and lock any access or privileges you don’t need. Dark Web marketplaces are much like ecommerce websites on the Surface Web, but with one major difference — they mainly sell illicit and/or illegally obtained goods. These include stolen login credentials, credit card details, medical records, and cryptocurrencies. According to the latest available data, Dark Web marketplaces have at least half a million users with more than 2,400 sellers.
Dark Web Threats And Dark Market Predictions For 2025
With the advent of several markets at the beginning of 2014, the number of multisellers rapidly grows, representing more than 20% of all sellers until the beginning of 2016 (see Supplementary Information Section S3). During 2016 and 2017, AphaBay becomes the dominant market (see Fig. 3), polarizing sellers around its own ecosystem, such that the fraction of multisellers decreases to 10% of all sellers until its closure. Then, after operation Bayonet, the number of sellers in all categories and multisellers significantly drops, as shown in Fig. Notably, the number of multisellers suffers the largest drop of \(-99\%\) by the end of the first quarter of 2018.
But in December of that year, Russian authorities started blocking people’s access to Tor, describing it as a cover for illegal activities. In 2023, Chainalysis discovered that some popular fraud shops rely on payment processors as a way to reduce their own costs, add efficiency to their operations, and perhaps add a layer of security to transactions. Genesis Market extensively used a payment processor called UAPS, so much that the processor’s average inflows fell by 25.7% after Genesis closed last April. Regardless, UAPS remains a key provider of payment infrastructure to top fraud shops. In one particularly devastating case, a man lost his entire $80,000 pension. Using his credentials, cybercriminals committed a variety of online fraud activity over the course of six months.
According to Check Point Research, schools and other educational institutions were the most targeted sectors, with attacks rising by 43% compared to 2021. The same report showed that cyberattacks on the healthcare industry grew by 86% in 2022 compared to the previous year. We review and list tools and products without bias, regardless of potential commissions. While Tor and similar browsers provide anonymity, some activity may still be visible to your ISP.
Activities
The resulting data set includes for each transaction the source and destination entities, the time, and the value of the transaction. The largest component of the S2S network of U2U transactions between sellers for each year with the respective number of nodes (N). The nodes are sellers that are active in that year, and an edge is placed between two sellers if at least one transaction occurs between them during that year. The network is mostly populated by U2U-only sellers, followed by market-only sellers.
Upon inspection, the main difference with Anon Market is their vast catalog of pharmaceuticals, specifically prescription drugs. In the image below you can see an array of pharmaceuticals currently for sale at the time of writing. Historically, Legalizer is positioned perfectly for the audience primarily based in Kazahstan, Moldova, Russia, and Belarus. Additionally, threat actor ‘GermanDrugScout24’ advertised a wide array of illicit substances priced in euros.
At Least 500,000 Users Regularly Visit Dark Web Marketplaces
Dark web hackers often use botnets to carry out DDoS attacks, causing disruption and financial loss for their targets. In the first arc of the anime series Lupin the 3rd Part V, Lupin III steals digital currency from the “Marco Polo” darknet market. One of the central76 discussion forums was Reddit’s /r/DarkNetMarkets/,777879 which has been the subject of legal investigation, as well as the Tor-based discussion forum, The Hub. Monopoly Market has been on the dark web since 2019 and has since served as a hub where criminals can buy and sell drugs, according to CyberScoop.
In the first 24 hours of launching Check your hack, two million people took advantage of the service. So far, five million people have used the tool, and over 13,000 victims have been notified that their computer was infected, and received instructions to help them make their device safe again. In 2019, the FBI started its investigation into Genesis Market and enlisted other government agencies and law enforcement organizations across the world, working towards the market’s closure on April 4, 2023. As part of the investigation, the Dutch National Police took the lead on cybercrime prevention, and Van Well shared his insight on the sophistication of the fraud shop’s operation.
Furthermore, after four years of operating and generating substantial profits, the admins likely lost motivation to continue and chose to exit the ecosystem to preserve their freedom and financial gains. This was reflected in the sharp decline in deposit volumes to Abacus between June and July, 2025. Between June 1 and June 27, 2025 average daily deposits to Abacus were USD 230,000 across 1,400 transactions. However, from June 28 to July 10, 2025, this dropped to USD 13,000 across just 100 deposits. The Chainalysis report estimates that romance scams have the “worst impact on victims of all scam types” due to the average payment size.
Ways Agentic AI Is Transforming Cybersecurity
The S2S network is mostly populated by U2U-only sellers, followed by market-only, and market-U2U (see Supplementary Information Section S5). The number of sellers in each category and multisellers as a function of time is shown in Fig. Until the end of 2013, when Silk Road is the dominant market (see Fig. 3), market-only sellers is the dominant category, and there are no multisellers. From the last quarter of 2013, U2U-only sellers become the largest category of sellers and remains as the largest throughout the rest of the observation period.
To access pages and information within the deep web, users require the correct authorisation and credentials. Miklos has long-time experience in cybersecurity and data privacy having worked with international teams for more than 10 years in projects involving penetration testing, network security and cryptography. Every location where personal data is stored is a potential target for cybercriminals. Here are some methods to thwart unauthorized access to your data repositories.
Similar unfamiliarity levels were recorded in New Zealand (80%), France (73%), Australia (72%), and the United Kingdom (72%). Of the surveyed countries, Germany (65%), India (58%), and the United States (55%) had the smallest share of people unfamiliar with the Dark Web. U.S.-based drug vendors on Abacus Market advertising a synthetic opioid called China White, which its customers can purchase using Bitcoin or Monero. Though Mega Darknet Market typically serves a Russian customer base, the drug revenue shown in the chart above likely came from customers based in Europe.
