Using telegram for communications with customers also allowed marketing to escape darknet forums and into the walls of public places. Normal people don't even need to know about darknet to buy drugs and what those @usernames on walls are is becoming common knowledge.
Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets
11–20 of 195 posts
Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets
#12Dead drops sounds like an awful way to distribute anything at scale. The loss from other people finding stuff seems enormous also.
Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets
#13I wonder if dark web markets will ever establish a comprehensive alternative parcel system... that seems like the natural, final extension of these ideas. The technical challenges to this would of course be significant (I'll refrain from listing them and suggesting potential workarounds since I don't really want to give anybody any specific ideas on this LOL)
There are quite a few holes in the scheme as outlined in the article. The author asserts that dead drops are better than post office boxes because they're harder to surveil, but what keeps law enforcement from signing up their own personnel as distributors? Then it's just a matter of staking out their own dead drop and arresting whoever shows up. This is why the first rule of opsec has always been, "Involve as few pe…
This requires both GPS and LoRaWAN hardware, which would introduce a financial overhead of about 20-30$ per package.
Fascinating idea, however.
Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets
#14I wonder if dark web markets will ever establish a comprehensive alternative parcel system... that seems like the natural, final extension of these ideas. The technical challenges to this would of course be significant (I'll refrain from listing them and suggesting potential workarounds since I don't really want to give anybody any specific ideas on this LOL)
There are quite a few holes in the scheme as outlined in the article. The author asserts that dead drops are better than post office boxes because they're harder to surveil, but what keeps law enforcement from signing up their own personnel as distributors? Then it's just a matter of staking out their own dead drop and arresting whoever shows up. This is why the first rule of opsec has always been, "Involve as few pe…
I think law enforcement spending all that money to catch consumers is very unlikely, it's the wrong end of the stick. Not to mention once its known they are cops, they'd have to try and reestablish themselves. Doesn't seem too effective to me. If anything it would help create kingpins because certain places would have a good reputation and newcomers would be avoided.
Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are quite a few holes in the scheme as outlined in the article. The author asserts that dead drops are better than post office boxes because they're harder to surveil, but what keeps law enforcement from signing up their own personnel as distributors? Then it's just a matter of staking out their own dead drop and arresting whoever shows up. This is why the first rule of opsec has always been, "Involve as few pe…
This requires both GPS and LoRaWAN hardware, which would introduce a financial overhead of about 20-30$ per package. Fascinating idea, however.
It's plausible that the beacon need not be directly co-located with the drop, but be near enough. It should also be possible to re-use them for some time. I would imagine that the actual cost overhead would really only be $20 - $30 per active dead-drop location + some percentage for lost or damaged beacons.
Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets
#16The biggest flaw here is the dead drop system. It doesn't scale well and involves many more complex steps and people in the system.
For example, a drone on surveillance duty that continuously watches the area will be able to identify patterns and pick out possible outliers. Combined that video feed with machine learning and it may be possible actively identify dead drop participants.
Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets
#17Russian darkmarkets started using dead drops years ago if I recall correctly
Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets
#18Dead drops sounds like an awful way to distribute anything at scale. The loss from other people finding stuff seems enormous also.
Illicit drug and alcohol distribution has traditionally large nominal margins and large expected loss at every layer, commensurate with the efficacy of law enforcement.
Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets
#19Very interesting reading the obstacles faced by the black market drug trade and how they're overcoming them. It seems like the producer layer is most susceptible to penetration as it is essentially identical to most gangs. It's entirely glossed over here but procuring the product seems like a difficult problem for an anonymized distributor: How do you make sure the product gets to your support layers? As interesting…
>As interesting as it all is, it's also very concerning for Law Enforcement. it seems better from their perspective than street gangs shooting each other over turf imo. an improvement for everyone involved, frankly. >How do you make sure the product gets to your support layers? through dead drops, of course ;)
if the darkweb resolves the drug on war issue .. that will be something
Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets
#20Dead drops sounds like an awful way to distribute anything at scale. The loss from other people finding stuff seems enormous also.
So long as there's sufficient profit margin to allow for an acceptable "shrinkage", it just becomes a cost of doing business. The benefits in terms of privacy/security for the typical darknet vendor probably make it well worth low double digit percentage losses, given the assumed margins from source to end user...