Saheed earned his degree in Technology and Ethics from the University of Lagos in Nigeria. Since then, he has dedicated his career to writing extensively about crucial infosec, data privacy, and cybersecurity topics. When he’s not empowering PrivacySavvy’s readers to take control of their online security, Saheed enjoys distance running, playing chess, and exploring the latest open-source software advancements. However, you can trace its roots to the development of technologies like the Tor network or Freenet. In March 2000, an Irish grad student named Ian Clarke created the software application, Freenet. This was the initial framework for anonymous communication and file sharing.
However, if we’re being honest, the majority of activity on darknet markets involves illegal or heavily regulated items. A 2020 study found that almost 57% of sites on the Tor network hosted some form of illegal content. Because they live on the fringes, these sites are remarkably innovative.
Why Are All The Darknet Markets Down
Many people (mostly criminals) use these sites to perform illegal transactions such as selling banned goods and services. We trained the semantic comparison model using the traces of Reddit as the benign corpora and the traces of the anonymous marketplaces/forums as the underground corpora. Thus, we identified 58 opioid jargon used in the anonymous marketplaces and forums (Table 2). Combining opioid jargon with known opioid product names 25-27, we generated an opioid keyword data set consisting of 311 opioid keywords with 13 categories.

Darknet Market Black
Russian Market has operated since 2019, specialising in stolen credentials, stealer logs, and remote desktop access. Threat reports consistently rank it among the top ten darknet sites Top 10 Dark Web Markets. The Abacus Market links to the new dark web marketplace sections and took over much of the vacuum left by the AlphaBay takedown. As of 2020, nearly 57% of the dark web was estimated to contain illegal content, including violence and extremist platforms.
Regarding profits, darknet vendors do not have to limit their trading to face-to-face interactions, and can instead sell drugs to a potentially worldwide customer base. This explains how the market of the dark web marketplace is affected. As Telegram has end-to-end encryption and anonymous profiles, it makes it an ideal choice for threat actors and hackers to take advantage of. Ulbricht faced several serious charges, including distributing illegal drugs, running a criminal enterprise, hacking, trafficking fake IDs, and money laundering.
- As with our previous reports, we gather data by scanning Dark Web marketplaces, forums, and websites.
- Our team searched the dark web and put together a list of the most active dark web marketplaces in order to assist you in monitoring illegal trade of products, cybercrime activity, and dark web trends in the dark web space.
- However, to the best of our knowledge, no large-scale study, which may cross multiple anonymous marketplaces and is cross-sectional, has been conducted to profile the opioid supply chain and unveil characteristics of opioid suppliers, commodities, and transactions.
- Otherwise, the buyer will pay the trader directly using cryptocurrency or any other payment method accepted by the trader (step 9) 7.
- Online payment methods such as mobile payments and payment processors are becoming more popular among retailers.
Darknet Market Superlist


Criminal Hacking Services
Apart from the dark web markets that are operating online today, some raided platforms influenced many markets. It maintains a very strict level of user verification and integration with an official Telegram account to provide real-time updates to users. Various cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Monero can be used to make purchases.
Darkfox Market

The victims, who are common users, businesses, and even banks, who end up paying the price. It became the blueprint for other dark web marketplaces that tried to take its place. These hackers don’t hide in the shadows as much as you might think. Anything from planting malware and stealing sensitive files to hijacking email accounts or breaking into social media profiles.
History Of Dark Web Marketplaces
Our study determined the underground marketplace and forum list based on darknet site search engines and previous research works 20. More specifically, we used darknet site search engines (such as Recon, Darknet live, Dark Eye, dark.fail, and DNStats 21,22) to search underground marketplaces and forums and then manually validated their activeness. In our study, we only selected marketplaces with more than 30 opioid listings. In this way, we gathered 5 active underground marketplaces with opioid listings.
Tracking vendor migration—such as from Archetyp to Exodus—provides insight into tactical shifts. Focusing intelligence collection on specialised marketplaces yields better ROI for threat detection and proactive defence. No, black market websites operate illegally and pose high risks of scams, fraud, and law enforcement action. Despite growing crackdowns from law enforcement agencies, the dark web remains a hotbed of criminal activity, offering everything from drugs to stolen data. Co-occurrence of the same opioid suppliers across different anonymous marketplaces.
However, if a hacker gains access to the unsecured network you are on, they can easily view your account details and steal or modify your information. There is no shortage of methods to get hacked, but there are just as many ways to defend against it. By following these suggestions, you can deter unwanted intruders from accessing your accounts at home or work. The DDoS attacks listed below are characterized by their target, number of access requests, quality, speed, and duration. Malware can compromise systems running on various operating systems, including Microsoft Windows and Android.
Still, the disruption of Hydra dealt a “huge blow“ to the ecosystem, according to multiple sources on the Dark Web. Major drug markets in the Dark Web are now worth around $315 million annually according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Freshtools is a unique marketplace in that it does not only provide the stolen data, but it allows criminals to purchase MaaS which can cause further damage to the victims. It is one of the most active and up to date markets and always provides new and updated malware and data. It has built a reputation for being a reliable source of stolen credit card data and PII.