Some dark web users found that their old logins on the Dream Market weren’t working. Sites like AlphaBay, Hansa, and Dream Market, after all, aren’t normal websites, but so-called “hidden services” designed to be accessed only with the anonymity software Tor, and thus more technically demanding than traditional websites to host. Torzon Market has established itself as a significant player in the darknet ecosystem, offering a secure, user-centric platform for anonymous trading. Its commitment to privacy, diverse product offerings, and robust security measures make it a preferred choice for users seeking discreet transactions within the darknet. Established in 2019, Russian Market is a well-known and highly regarded data store on the dark web, specializing in the sale of PII and various forms of stolen data.
Alphabay Market
His agency would likely have to take on more massive dark web marketplaces in the future, he said. The migration of buyers and sellers comes as authorities around the world crack down on digital marketplaces that cater to growing numbers of shadowy sales. AlphaBay listed more than 100,000 items at the time it was taken offline.
DOJ Announces Today The Takedown Of Alphabay, The Largest Online ‘Dark Market’
And despite the fact that the two darknet markets will inevitably have a successor, Wainwright emphasized that this was a pretty huge bust. A couple of days later, Cazes did speak for the first time to his lawyer of choice, a young American defense attorney named Roger Bonakdar. Bonakdar was in his office, just a block from Rabenn’s in downtown Fresno, when he got the call about Cazes from the federal defenders’ office for the city. Learning of the magnitude of the case—easily the biggest of its kind to ever occur in the state of California, to say nothing of Fresno—he immediately agreed to speak to Cazes.
Some users claim that mr_white and his team from WHM are to blame for last week’s DDoS while others speculate that HugBunter himself could be mr_white. Unfortunately, DeSnake’s contributions written in a mixture of English and Russian backfired and senior members of XSS berated them for their lack of operational security and inability to properly understand the dynamics of the Russian language. DarkOwl has been unable to assess how the larger darknet community (outside of Dread) feels about the new Alphabay Market.
Tools like the dark web present opportunities for people like Alexandre Cazes to run criminal enterprises from behind a keyboard in one country while facilitating the movements of illicit goods and services from one corner of the globe to the other. 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.
I’ve noticed they’re big on local vibes—vendors tweak their stock for where you’re at. Telegram’s creeping into the darknet scene—not full markets, but vendor channels. I’ve stumbled on groups pushing everything from scripts to gear, often linking back to spots like Tor2door. Bitcoin’s blockchain is too leaky these days, and markets like Archetyp going Monero-only prove it. Mixers help, sure, but XMR’s built-in privacy is why I’ve switched my stash over.
AlphaBay Stats (V2 As Of July
Over the months that followed, Bonakdar says, he asked US prosecutors and the Thai government for video footage of Cazes’ cell at the time of his death. I did, years later, request and receive several clips of video from inside Cazes’ cell. One clip shows Cazes looking up and down the jail hallway through the cell’s bars, then doing something with his towel just off-screen before disappearing behind the cell’s bathroom door. The next clip, which starts more than half an hour later, shows guards rushing in, followed by Jen Sanchez, and looking over the bathroom wall, apparently at his corpse. After Cazes was moved to the NSB lockup, he would be brought out—handcuffed, slightly disheveled, with a week of stubble—for occasional chats with her. Together they would deal with yet more paperwork, or she would hand him a phone to speak with his attorneys or his wife, who also came to visit Cazes daily and spoke privately to him through the bars of his cell.
Combating Transnational Crime
Today’s version of AlphaBay experienced a relatively slow start, as vendors and buyers questioned the nature of this relaunch, wary of law enforcement involvement. DeSnake’s eagerness to launch AlphaBay with increased security measures, like AlphaGuard and a decentralization project—an effort to sidestep whatever operational security Cazes blundered, eventually leading to his detainment—was met with some skepticism. AlphaBay was noteworthy in the world of darknet markets for accepting another cryptocurrency in addition to bitcoin; one of the first marketplaces ever to recognize the potential and support for Monero, implemented at the end of August 2016. But all of the defensive wizardry that DeSnake describes—both AlphaGuard and the decentralization project—remain largely unproven talk, says Flashpoint analyst Ian Gray, who closely monitors dark web markets. The decentralization plan, for instance, would require collective buy-in from a large number of developers and network operators for what would likely be seen as an essentially illegal project.
Buyers, Sellers And Cops On The Hunt For AlphaBay’s Successor
He was driven to rebuild AlphaBay, he says, after reading about an FBI presentation on the circumstances of Cazes’ arrest that he deemed disrespectful. “AlphaBay name was put in bad light after the raids. I am here to make amends to that.” The investigation into AlphaBay revealed that numerous vendors sold fentanyl and heroin, and there have been multiple overdose deaths across the country attributed to purchases on the site. DarkOwl has assigned assets to monitoring and collecting data from the new AlphaBay Marketplace, leveraging our darknet intelligence capabilities, despite their increased crawler detection measures and ongoing server instability. Our analysts will continue to follow this market’s presence and reputation on the darknet, and provide further updates as this story unfolds. During this research, DarkOwl discovered a surface web domain that mirrors much of the information DeSnake shared on Dread, but with a Tor link to the market that is not in the mirrors.txt verified links list from AlphaBay.
In contrast to existing literature, VendorLink utilizes the strength of supervised pre-training to perform closed-set vendor verification, open-set vendor identification, and low-resource domain adaption tasks. Altogether, our approach can help Law Enforcement Agencies (LEA) make more informed decisions by verifying and identifying migrating vendors and their potential aliases with state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance on both existing and emerging low-resource (LR) Darknet markets. AlphaBay’s founder, Alexander Cazes, was arrested in Thailand, and U.S. officials successfully negotiated his extradition to the U.S. in early July.
AlphaBay, The Largest Online “Dark Market,” Shut Down
- From studying the layout of the spec house, M had determined that Cazes’ home office must be across the upstairs hall from the master bedroom.
- AlphaBay has long been rumored to have some sort of connections to Russia or Russians.
- The market was seized by law enforcement in July 2017 as part of Operation Bayonet, and although it was relaunched, its operational status is now offline.
- He maintains, at the very least, that his client’s suicide is far from proven, though he admits he doesn’t know who would have killed Cazes—or had him killed.
- Similarly, at the time of the takedown, Hansa was the third largest dark web marketplace, the perfect honeypot for global law enforcement teams to lure in cyber criminals and strike back.
Despite its name, the marketplace operates primarily in English and serves a global audience. It has gained a reputation for being a reliable source of high-quality data for cybercriminals. Based on our observations from analysis on dark web data using Lunar, we’ve identified the top 7 marketplaces on the dark web in 2025. We developed Lunar to monitor the deep and dark web, including dark web marketplace sites. At the height of its reign, AlphaBay had over 250,000 listings for illegal drugs and toxic chemicals. At one point in 2013, Miller’s partner on a surveillance assignment suggested they try to work on a new sort of case.
Since 2020, 2easy has sold massive stealer logs with sensitive data like passwords, bank cards, and initial access credentials. It supports operations in multiple languages and operates on both clearnet and Tor. Rumker, if it was in fact the tool that located AlphaBay, had likely just been “burned.” Whoever leaked it had, in doing so, exposed the vulnerabilities of the Bitcoin protocol it exploits. Dark-web administrators like DeSnake will no doubt take more care in the future to prevent their cryptocurrency wallets from revealing their IP addresses to snooping Bitcoin nodes.
Conspicuously absent are some preferred features, such as the lack of pre-order (direct pay) purchases, a multi-sig option for BTC payments, and forced PGP encryption for communications. It makes up for this with enhanced security and user safety features, helping users to ensure they are not getting phished. Of course, you have every right to be suspicious about this newly emerged AlphaBay’s successor. Moreover, you can find other markets with advanced security capabilities and unique approach to the darknet trading, including Monopoly, Versus, and ToRReZ. Still, DeSnake offers many features and initiatives that seem intriguing to say the least. Regardless of whether it ends up as a success or a failure, it will still be exciting to observe the AlphaBay’s journey.
Beginning in September 2021, Abacus Market has established itself as one of the leading dark web marketplaces. After AlphaBay closed, Abacus Market took its place as the world’s largest underground darknet marketplaces. Abacus Market quickly rose to prominence by attracting former AlphaBay users and providing a comprehensive platform for a wide range of illicit activities. The above text has been a brief history and current situation surrounding AlphaBay return and why people should use it.
According to a 2023 research paper by the Institute of Cyber Security for Society, data shows that after a market closes, dark web users will quickly move to other reputable markets as soon as possible. In July 2017, police in the US and Europe, including the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Agency, Europol and the Dutch National Police, partnered to take down the site. AlphaBay’s servers were seized with the help of authorities in Thailand, Lithuania, Canada, the United Kingdom and France. The operation included the arrest of suspected AlphaBay founder Alexandre Cazes on 5 July, detained on behalf of the US in Thailand.
