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Alleged Dark Web Kingpin Doxed Himself With His Personal Hotmail Address (vice.com)
Joseph Cox, reporting for Motherboard: On Thursday, US authorities announced the seizure of the largest dark web marketplace AlphaBay. Europol and Dutch police also claimed seizure of Hansa, another popular market. In their dark web investigations, law enforcement have increasingly turned to hacking tools, including the deployment of browser exploits on a mass scale. But tracking down the alleged AlphaBay administrator was much more mundane, officials said. Alexandre Cazes, who US authorities say used the handle alpha02 as administrator of the site, allegedly left his personal email in a welcome message to new AlphaBay members, according to the forfeiture complaint published on Thursday. The news echoes the arrest of Ross Ulbricht, the convicted creator of the original Silk Road, who made a similar security mistake. "In December 2016, law enforcement learned that CAZES' personal email was included in the header of AlphaBay's 'welcome email' to new users in December 2014," the complaint reads. Users received this message once they signed up to AlphaBay's forum and entered an email address. Cazes' email address -- Pimp_Alex_91@hotmail.com -- was also included in the header of the AlphaBay forum password recovery process, the complaint adds. From there, investigators found the address was linked to an Alexandre Cazes, and discovered his alleged front company, EBX Technologies.
Cazes provided his own encryption backdoor, because the police literally walked into his house through the back door and found his computer running unencrypted and connected to alphabay.
Although the linked article doesn't mention the link between his email and his 'front' company, the Wired article says that police identified him because his Hotmail address was linked to a PayPal account which was linked to his company.
My head reels at the inept OpSec of this clown. He runs the largest illegal marketplace in the world, yet posts links to his real PayPal account. With no visible source of income, he lives a high profile lifestyle in Bangkok with 3 houses and the most expensive Lamborghini they make, while running the marketplace with an unattended decrypted laptop. Another demonstration that intelligence and common sense rarely go hand-in-hand.