The reality we have to accept is that there will always be demand for such services. Whenever illegal services are taken down, the gap created will always be filled by other criminals willing to profit from the opportunity. Of course, the takedown only affected some Onion sites – many are still alive. Right now there are 4 times more hidden websites online in the Tor network than those that were shutdown.Ĭybercrime, just like any other illegal activity, is hard to eradicate completely. You can read more on The Tor Blog about their Thoughts and Concerns about Operation Onymous. Specifically, there are reports that three systems of disappeared and there is another report by an independent relay operator. We do not know why the systems were seized, nor do we know anything about the methods of investigation which were used. Over the last few days, we received and read reports saying that several Tor relays were seized by government officials. onion services that were taken down during this operation: Alpaca, Black Market, Blue Sky, Bungee 54, CannabisUK, Cloud Nine, Dedope, Fake Real Plastic, FakeID, Farmer1, Fast Cash!, Flugsvamp, Golden Nugget, Hydra, Pablo Escobar Drugstore, Pandora, Pay Pal Center, Real Cards, Silk Road 2.0, Smokeables, Sol’s Unified USD Counterfeit’s, Super Note Counter, Tor Bazaar, Topix, The Green Machine, The Hidden Market and Zero Squad.Īt the sametime, reports appeared about a number of Tor nodes being seized by authorities: The official announcement about Operation Onymous is available on the Europol website.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and Eurojust, resulted in 17 arrests of vendors and administrators running these online marketplaces and more than 410 hidden services being taken down. Operation Onymous, coordinated by Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3), the FBI, the U.S.

Tor-related communities, such as privacy enthusiasts, but also cybercriminals (of course!), expressed worry after a global law enforcement operation targeted a number of illegal services based on Tor. The recent shutdown of SilkRoad 2.0 was just a small part of the events affecting the Tor network that unfolded last week.

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