The Evolution of the Dark Web
by Daniel Smith
Darknet markets are nothing new but they have grown considerably in popularity since the highly publicized take down of the Silk Road marketplace in October of 2013. Since then users around the world have flocked to these sites in search of drugs and other illicit services. Due to the high demand and availability for these items many marketplaces began to spring up across the Darknet. Most of these marketplaces feature drugs, but after the Silk Road takedown, marketplaces began offering items Silk Road wouldn’t allow. These items included weapons, credit cards and other malicious services like malware, DDoS-as-a-service and data dumps.

Today, there is an estimated 2 million daily users on the Tor network alone. This popularity is largely due to the amount of funding and academic review that the network has received over the years. Accessing the Onion network is also extremely easy and does not require an expert’s knowledge. The same goes for hosting and running a hidden service on the Onion network. But with this ease of access comes real life consequences. Many people look to the Onion network for anonymity and obfuscation. They use these tools so they can carry out their activities with little to no trace. But this is not always the case. Criminals are humans too and they are prone to mistakes just like an average user.
So far, 2017 has been an eventful year for the Onion network. Raids and takedowns have become common on the Dark web as federal agents across the world step up enforcement. In parallel, market operators and vendors are not only targeted by law enforcement but they are also being targeted by competition, rogue users, vigilantes and extortionists looking to profit by exposing the administrators’ personal details and vulnerabilities in their marketplace.
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