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Someone Is Trying to Knock the Dark Web Drug Trade Offline (thedailybeast.com)

Posted by msmash on from the new-wrinkle dept.

Joseph Cox, reporting for the Daily Beast: The dark web -- a pack of websites that hides their physical location with special software -- is always a precarious place, with the FBI shutting down massive criminal networks, or competing sites hacking one another. Now, someone is trying to take the four largest drug marketplaces offline, seemingly by flooding them with a torrent of traffic. These sites offer a mail-order service for pretty much any drug a customer could imagine, from LSD to varieties of heroin. As of at least Friday morning, several marketplaces were inaccessible or could only be visited from backup website addresses, and at the time of publication are still facing problems. It's not totally clear who is behind the outages, but the downtime has disrupted the dark-web community somewhat. "We are facing a DDoS attack atm [at the moment] and I guess many other markets as well," a Reddit moderator for the site dubbed Wall Street, one of the affected marketplaces, told The Daily Beast.

14 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. i noticed that, too by turkeydance · · Score: 2

    have to hit the street

  2. Probably ... by PPH · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... big Pharma. Heroin is cutting into their oxycodone sales.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
    1. Re:Probably ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Sounds about right especially since these organizations funding anti drug programs and fighting legalization. https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-09-08/fentanyl-maker-donates-big-to-campaign-opposing-pot-legalization

    2. Re:Probably ... by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      Not to mention that certain TLAs don't like it when you cut into the way they fill their "funding for special operations".

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    3. Re:Probably ... by bobbied · · Score: 2

      There's no real money in legitimate Oxy sales, it went generic a LONG time ago.

      Where I'm sure they don't mind if their wholesalers do, Big Pharma dare not openly engage in illicit production and sales. Regulators would find out quickly if they did and poof, no profits...

      --
      "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
    4. Re:Probably ... by freeze128 · · Score: 2

      Somehow, I can't imagine heroin addicts buying their next fix over the internet. It seems more likely that they would need it to be delivered WAY FASTER, and they would eventually end up selling their PC/laptop/smartphone just to get money for their next fix anyway.

      Plus, a local news story about the rising overdoses from Heroin mentions that the Heroin was TOO POWERFUL, because it was mixed with oxycodone.

    5. Re:Probably ... by dj245 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Somehow, I can't imagine heroin addicts buying their next fix over the internet. It seems more likely that they would need it to be delivered WAY FASTER, and they would eventually end up selling their PC/laptop/smartphone just to get money for their next fix anyway. Plus, a local news story about the rising overdoses from Heroin mentions that the Heroin was TOO POWERFUL, because it was mixed with oxycodone.

      You would be surprised. Buying over the internet completely eliminates the risk of getting physically harmed during the transaction. The risk of being robbed is probably about the same. The risk of getting caught by law enforcement is probably less (for reasonably small quantities).

      Desperate people living day to day probably aren't using the dark web, but such people probably aren't using Amazon Prime either. There are plenty of affluent drug users, if Hollywood is any indication.

      --
      Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
  3. Re:Drug cartels are ... by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 2

    The Amazon Effect impacts middlemen, not manufacturers. The owners of the drug cartels are the CIA, while the cartels only really focus on distribution as a matter of doing business, and do so at significant PR and monetary costs. They're still stuck with distribution and it's mostly the end dealers or dealers near the end of the chain who use the darknet sites. If any Amazon Effect is involved it's impacting the last 1-2 guys in the distribution chain, but more likely they're the ones using it to avoid taking in-person risks during transactions, or at least to minimize them.

  4. Flooding one end to find the other? by glitch! · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I wonder if this is a way of finding the customers. The dark system may hide IP addresses, but if someone can affect the timing on one end, that itself can be a signal. If they can flood one end, maybe they can look for indications of that congestion at the other end.

    --
    A dingo ate my sig...
    1. Re:Flooding one end to find the other? by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      Not really good enough. Many TOR sites, dark webbed and otherwise, have atrocious response times. You'd get too many false positives.

      Not that this would discourage our current "arrest them all then have them prove their innocence" law enforcement strategy.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  5. Piercing anonymity? by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This leads to an interesting question.

    We know that the original dark-web protocol allowed state actors to pierce the veil of anonymity by traffic analysis. For example, even though packets were encrypted, you could follow packets of the same length to their destination. Do this multiple times, and you have a statistical certainty of the destination site.

    That was fixed, and a similar technique with packet timing was also fixed.

    I'm wondering now: can packet *volume* can be used to fingerprint a communication path?

    Suppose you could flood a site through the Onion system, and also turn it on and off with a 1-sec resolution. Set up a pattern of on/off packet floods, then see which destinations get flooded during which seconds.

    Can you then use traffic analysis to uncover the destination site?

    1. Re:Piercing anonymity? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Can you then use traffic analysis to uncover the destination site?

      Yes. Which is why it's a requirement of any serious anonymous protocol to send a random amount of traffic. This also translates into genuine uploads/downloads that will transfer at random speeds. It's still not enough because the fact that there is *a* destination translates into a target that can still be figured out by simply blocking routes until you can no longer reach said destination. It's why the more serious networks are decentralized. Yes, there's going to be *a* destination at the beginning, but once the content is pushed out then a lot of other nodes are also destinations. It'd still be possible to do the above attack, but it'd require enough control during times when content is published vs being able to launch the at any time so long as enough nodes are controlled at one time.

      In the end, since the content is considered illegal and the NSA clearly doesn't play by the rules (and the FBI doesn't either considering their willingness to host illegal content) and there's parallel construction, it all comes down to the willingness of law enforcement to spend the resources to actually go after dark web sites. The only thing protecting people today is how bogged down the judiciary system already is with drug arrests, to the point that "a speed trial" is a joke. So, they spend tons of resources to go after low hanging fruit, big players, and a few random others they can nab. The rest just keep going, perhaps with more fear they'll be arrested next time.

  6. Re:Bah by barbariccow · · Score: 2

    Not dead, but his unwillingness to try heroin^H^H^H^H^H^H^H The Game ended up saving the crew. Just Say No to Wesley Crusher!

  7. Re:When did the definition change? by barbariccow · · Score: 2

    The Dark Web is the internet that doesn't travel over fibre, thus the data is poorly lit.