In January 2017, the API was once again compromised, allowing over 200,000 private messages from the last 30 days and a list of usernames to be leaked. The attack was from a single hacker who was paid by AlphaBay for the disclosure. AlphaBay reported that the exploit had only been used in conjunction with this attack and not used previously.

AlphaBay only accepts Monero, has strict product restrictions, and doesn’t allow people from certain countries to use it. Just like any other darknet platform, it isn’t clear who runs the site, but it has been around since 2014. Cazes , the site’s founder and administrator, took his own life during his extradiction to the United States. At the time, the community praised AlphaBay for its sound management.

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The overt exclusion of CIS countries is peculiar, especially given that DeSnake and alpha02 were openly active in Russian carding communities. Like the historic AlphaBay, the market’s forum is located on the same domain as the market and has limited discussions. Most of the forum is marked private until the user formally introduces themselves in accordance with the rules outlined by DeSnake.

There is a “Admin” account as was the case with the historical AlphaBay forum, and DeSnake also has their own personal account. DarkOwl believes this account may be maintained by DeSnake based on the observation that they leave a similar “Thank You.” at the end of every post. One concern is that the admin may be doing this project from a compromised position, following instructions from law enforcement to trap vendors of illegal products. It may be preferable to wait until stores have generated some sales before joining the “revitalized” AlphaBay.

AlphaBay Darknet Market is Back!

AlphaGuard is quite advanced piece of code which can run even without having access to any servers provided by Administration. AlphaBay has been relaunched by DeSnake in August 2021 with a new design but with the same admin as before, and is once again plan to become the biggest darknet market in history. The address used by the phishing site will look familiar to regular users of the AlphaBay darknet market, but rather than pointing to an anonymous hidden service, it points to a phishing site hosted by AttractSoft GmbH in Germany. Herrell — who went by usernames “Penissmith” and “Botah” — was paid in Bitcoin to handle more than 20,000 disputes between vendors and buyers on AlphaBay.

DeSnake told WIRED that his former partner Alexandre Cazes often overruled his suggestions about AlphaBay’s security system as excessive and unnecessary. Hence, the current owner plans to implement many of those rejected ideas in his new project. If you’re an old-school darknet user, you, probably, already know what the legend says. But if you’re a complete neophyte, and the name AlphaBay doesn’t ring any bells with you, let’s do some recap.

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AlphaBay operated for more than two years and had transactions exceeding $1 billion in Bitcoin and other digital currencies. The site, which operated on the anonymous Tor network, was a major source of heroin and fentanyl, and sales originating from AlphaBay have been linked to multiple overdose deaths in the United States. AlphaBay operated as a hidden service on the “Tor” network, and utilized cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Monero and Ethereum in order to hide the locations of its underlying servers and the identities of its administrators, moderators, and users. The unconfirmed hypothesis is that publicly available IP addresses are a vulnerability that leaves Dream’s data centers worryingly exposed.

• The Empire darknet market referenced by lordlucifer launched in 2017.
• Furthermore, darknet users rarely draw so much attention to themselves.
• Ironically, some of the services that can be bought and sold on the AlphaBay Market include spam sending services, “bank drops” , account details, and other services useful to fraudsters engaged in phishing.
• “We have a very strong policy of not paying an extortionist twice, so he is now making throwaway accounts and sending us proofs of his Jabber conversation with you in an effort to extort more coins from us. Now we are just ignoring him and we hope he will just get tired shortly.”
• It transacted 9.5 million bitcoins in two-years time, valued at $1.2 billion at the time.
• We have always been transparent, professional and fair to every party involved that is why we were the preferred place of business by hundreds of thousands of buyers and vendors.

This operation to seize the AlphaBay site coincides with efforts by Dutch law enforcement to investigate and take down the Hansa Market, another prominent dark web market. Like AlphaBay, Hansa Market was used to facilitate the sale of illegal drugs, toxic chemicals, malware, counterfeit identification documents, and illegal services. The administrators of Hansa Market, along with its thousands of vendors and users, also attempted to mask their identities to avoid prosecution through the use of Tor and digital currency. Further information on the operation against the Hansa Market can be obtained from Dutch authorities.

AlphaBay darknet phishing attack impersonates .onion domain

DarkOwl could not confirm any prior darknet experience from the moderators DeSnake has installed as Staff on the market and forum. DarkOwl has been unable to assess how the larger darknet community feels about the new Alphabay Market. AlphaBay historically had a vocal and persistence presence on Darknet Market Avengers forum which unfortunately, has been offline for several weeks.

This makes it easier for law enforcement to locate the servers and gain full control of them without the knowledge of vendors and buyers. Concerned Redditors have discovereda non-encrypted (‘clearnet‘) IP address in Dream’s source code, which many users are interpreting as a sign that law enforcement agencies might have taken over control of the market and are now actively monitoring the platform. The marketplace has over 8,400 listings and 500 vendors who communicate in English and accept Bitcoin for transactions. Alphabay is a great market site for browsing around and finding products you may not find otherwise.

Almost all of our servers are kept in locations with high amount of armed guards and multiple security protocols to pass through before accessing the server racks. Our hosting providers are proven bulletproof which means they will not respond to Law Enforcement requests – local or international. The phishing site used in this attack was discovered on Thursday and is still operating at the time of writing. It mimics the genuine AlphaBay Market login page, and prompts the victim to enter his username and password. A client-side check forces the victim to also complete the security code CAPTCHA field, although the phishing site does not care whether the correct value was entered. Moreover, what if law enforcement officials are using the AB PGP keys to lure in unsuspecting victims in a similar fashion to the way Hansa was seized?