Historically, DNMs have been known for the illicit drug trade, but in recent years have differentiated themselves with unique service offerings. For example, in Russia-based DNMs, the illicit drug trade remains predominant. Since last year’s Crypto Crime Report, the top performing Russia-based DNMs have held steady, but Kraken DNM overtook Mega as the leading DNM by annual revenue in 2024. The market is known for its extensive product listings and reputation system that helps buyers evaluate the reliability of vendors. FreshTools, founded in 2019, specializes in selling stolen account credentials and data, particularly webmail, RDPs (Remote Desktop Protocols), and cPanels. A curated collection of darknet resources for educational purposes, offering insights into darknet frameworks, tools, and security practices.
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By relying on encryption, pseudo-anonymous currencies, and network-level anonymity, they create a false sense of safety, drawing in both buyers and sellers. Authorities and law enforcement agencies are constantly trying to shut down illegal marketplaces and chats on messenger services where stolen or sensitive data is traded. A well-known example of this is BreachForums, which reappeared several times under a different name and also under a different onion link after being shut down by the authorities. The dark web hosts a range of content including stolen data, hacking tools, illegal marketplaces, whistleblower documents, and anonymous forums.
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Importantly, the algorithm returns reasonable estimates for the number of sellers when compared against a benchmark of nine DWMs where estimates exist. Then, we reveal a concentration of activity around an elite group of participants, where a large fraction of the trading volume is driven by a small number of players. We find that trading properties of buyers and sellers reflect the dominance of DWMs in the ecosystem.
During our tests for the research, we were able to register with a bogus email and a random username. All that one can expect from a deep web marketplace when it comes to anonymity and security. Track and analyze darknet activities using our advanced cyber threat intelligence platform to stay ahead of emerging threats. Archetyp Market was dismantled in June 2025 during Operation Deep Sentinel in a coordinated raid across six countries. At the time, it had over 600,000 users, 17,000 listings, and approximately €250 million in transactions. Authorities seized €7.8 million and arrested operators in Germany, Spain, Sweden, Romania, the Netherlands, and the US Europol leads takedown of Archetyp.
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For journalists, intelligence agents, and everyday citizens living in oppressive regimes, the dark web is a critical tool for supporting free speech and open access to news. Unfortunately, this same benefit is also useful for criminals, who routinely leverage the dark web to peddle illegal or stolen goods, obtain malware or other malicious tools, and coordinate their nefarious activities. Dark Web statistics show that all marketplaces had a combined daily revenue of $4.2 million shortly before Hydra was shut down in April 2022. Only days later, the remaining marketplaces managed a total of $447,000 — a staggering 89.4% decline. According to analysts, the market gradually recovered as the year progressed, with most Hydra sellers and buyers initially moving to the OMG!
The tool scans the dark web marketplaces and forums for signs of compromised personal credentials. Torzon market made its debut in September 2022, and ever since, it has been on an upward trajectory. In fact, it now features more than 11,600 illegal items, which include hacking tools, hard drugs, and all types of cybercrime services. For instance, a factory employee can secretly slip away with one and sell it on the darknet markets. In this darkest corner of the internet, that gun becomes an illegal weapon. A dark web search engine like DuckDuckGo offers impressive anonymity features and makes it easy to access the shops.
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They add new batches of stolen data every other week, and there’s even a bidding system where buyers can place offers on new data batches as soon as they become available. Imagine an underground version of your favorite online marketplace, somewhere hidden, exclusive, and often operating outside legal boundaries. It is similar to an online store, except it’s not the type you’ll find with a quick Google search. These marketplaces are full of risks (security, legal, ethical issues – all of them).
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This structural change is reflected in the median net income of sellers and buyers, as shown in Fig. While the curves for the seller and buyer median net income were negatively correlated before Silk Road’s shutdown, after that moment they became positively correlated. Specifically, sellers show a trend of increase and buyers a trend of decrease in their median net income before the shutdown.
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While not all are pictured above, in total, we found 16 vendors either selling or sourcing drug material from Abacus and purchasing production supplies from this China-based vendor. Since 2021, Abacus Market’s revenue has increased substantially, and in 2024, it more than doubled, growing by 183.2% YoY. This increase may be due in part to the closures of top DNMs, the shift to the exclusive acceptance of XMR by other active markets, and delistings of XMR by popular centralized exchanges. The below graph shows an increase in Abacus sales (in BTC) following the closure of ASAP Market in July 2023, and a further increase following some CEXs delisting XMR. As for online pharmacies, these have predominantly catered to wholesale and large retail customers in the last several years, and 2024 saw growth in wholesale purchases toward the end of last year. Like DNMs, online pharmacies receive most of their revenues from larger drug resellers.
Individually, they are able to yield significant high incomes compared to other types of sellers. After the UAPS infrastructure takedown, we observed a swift decline in on-chain activity from UAPS counterparties, indicating that many fraud shops relied on this infrastructure to process customer payments. The chart below shows this counterparty decline, as well as a drop in crypto flows across the fraud shop ecosystem. Deposits span from the hundreds to the tens of thousands of dollars, and the average deposit amount in 2024 was over $2,000. China-based precursor manufacturers mark the beginning of the synthetic drug supply chain. In years past, these organizations were more overt in their display of such products, openly advertising on mainstream B2B websites.
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Established in 2012, the platform is a time capsule that collects snapshots of websites. These onion addresses will remain online even if the original page disappears. It also keeps the graphical copy and text of the page for better accuracy. If you know the right websites, you can easily access a tremendous amount of information, including research articles, news stories, and more. The dark web is a part of the internet that you only step into with a specific tool (Tor, more on this later in the article).
The aforementioned Tor browser has established itself as the go-to browser for accessing the Dark Web. Though there are other browsers with similar functionality, Deep Web statistics point to Tor as the most popular — with 5.92 million new downloads worldwide in 2023’s third quarter. It will route your traffic through multiple servers instead of one, making tracking your data and activities even harder. A reliable, fast, and user-friendly VPN service offering lots of customizable options for privacy geeks.
The site seeks to liberate information by making it free to individuals and institutions. This means you can visit the site anonymously using the Onion browser, especially if you live under an oppressive regime. ProPublica is a popular online publication that won five Pulitzers in 2016. It aims to expose abuses of power and betrayal of public trust through investigative journalism. Moreover, due to its popularity, many copycats of the Hidden Wiki exist. So don’t be surprised if you encounter different versions that claim to be genuine, and be very careful.
- Even if you’ve never visited these markets, your personal and financial data might already be there, having been leaked through a data breach.
- Attacks with a smaller number of requests typically sell for less, and the target networks’ protection level also impacts the price.
- Dark markets include features similar to those found in legitimate e-commerce platforms, such as product listings, user reviews, ratings, and customer support.
- Awazon Market is a top-tier dark web marketplace with claims to revolutionize secure anonymous commerce.
- Nevertheless, by analysing the income of each multiseller, we observe that the median income still reflects their high income, as shown in Fig.
- The classification is performed in five steps (see Fig. 1), as detailed next.
Although these marketplaces are continuously shut down by law enforcement agencies, they still work today. Interestingly, new sites get more hype, and it even becomes difficult to shut them down, as they have better security than the older ones. The evolution from IRC to Telegram represents more than just a shift in tools, it signals a transformation in how cybercrime infiltrates daily digital life. Criminals no longer retreat to hidden enclaves; they co-opt mainstream platforms.
