Operation Onymous seizes hundreds of darknet sites, 17 arrested globally

[Shawn Knight]

News of Silk Road 2.0’s shutdown and the arrest of alleged mastermind Blake Benthall was a serious blow to the darkweb community earlier this week but as it turns out, that was only one piece of a much larger puzzle.

Working closely with Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Homeland Security Investigations (HIS) and Eurojust, the FBI carried out a massive sting operation that resulted in 17 arrests and the closure of more than 400 online drug markets.

Operation Onymous also seized Bitcoins worth approximately $1 million, 180,000 euros as well as an unknown amount of drugs, gold and silver.

In an interview with Wired, the head of the European Cybercrime Center, Troels Oerting, said his staff hadn’t taken full inventory of the sites removed but it included Cloud 9, Hydra, Blue Sky, Pandora, Topix, Flugsvamp, Cannabis Road and Black Market.

As the publication points out, law enforcement officials haven’t – nor are they likely to – fully disclosed how they managed to track down the darkweb sites. Given the sheer volume of sites caught up in the operation, it’s entirely possible that officials may have discovered a new vulnerability in the Tor network.

Oerting said it’s something they want to keep for themselves. The way they do it, he said, can’t be shared with the whole world because they want to do it again and again and again.

Andrew Lewman, a representative for the non-profit Tor project, downplayed idea of a network vulnerability and said it sounds like old-fashioned police work.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/58751-operation-onymous-seizes-hundreds-darknet-sites-17-arrested.html

 

[Guest]

F'king lol @ Old fashioned police work. It makes me laugh when people talk up the lil governmental minions. Who usually let the criminals go free and put the annoying bloke down the road inside for 20 years. All a bit backwards. And actually do work ? I am hedging a bet on failed code... especially with it being 9 sites at once. Altho maybe they are taking a leaf out of the fappening experience.

On a plus side, hats off for not telling people how you did it and keeping it under your hat for a round 2. That is the most sensible thing I have seen in ages. The media ruin their right to free speech, with their right to be as stupid as possible, and usually teach more *****s how to get up to no good.

 

[Revolution 11]

Despite my libertarian tendencies, especially on tech and privacy, I do think this was a good thing overall. No harm done to innocents, the bad guy goes to jail, a lot of dangerous or undesirable goods are harder to find.

My concern is that with the success of these raids, governments fail to realize that there is a demand for this stuff and will continue to play whack-a-mole with future Silk Roads. Good enforcement is key but if you don't destroy the demand itself for illegal services/goods, you are just winning the battle, and losing the war.

 

[yRaz]

F'king lol @ Old fashioned police work. It makes me laugh when people talk up the lil governmental minions. Who usually let the criminals go free and put the annoying bloke down the road inside for 20 years. All a bit backwards. And actually do work ? I am hedging a bet on failed code... especially with it being 9 sites at once. Altho maybe they are taking a leaf out of the fappening experience.

On a plus side, hats off for not telling people how you did it and keeping it under your hat for a round 2. That is the most sensible thing I have seen in ages. The media ruin their right to free speech, with their right to be as stupid as possible, and usually teach more *****s how to get up to no good.

Guest comments make me laugh

 

[captaincranky]

This is an unmitigated disaster! "Oh the horror, the horror". Now if I want any kind of illegal drugs, I'll have to trudge all the way to my front door, and then open it.