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AlphaBay, the Largest Online 'Dark Market,' Shut Down

justice.gov

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Re: AlphaBay, the Largest Online 'Dark Market,' Shut Down

#21

Post by Pfiffer »

Romanulus wrote: post #14
B1narySunset wrote: post #6

This won't stop people who want drugs from buying them. What it'll do is prevent some people from buying them from reputable sellers with positive feedback. Now they might have to find some shady dealer who could be selling them rat poison.

Why is 'selling poison instead of drugs' even a logical scare-tactic? Wouldn't even the shadiest of dealers want to keep their customers/hosts/victims around to, you know, keep bleeding money?

I think "poison" here means things more like Fentanyl, which has been recently cut into a lot of different opiates.

Re: AlphaBay, the Largest Online 'Dark Market,' Shut Down

#23

Post by tetrep »

Romanulus wrote: post #14
B1narySunset wrote: post #6

This won't stop people who want drugs from buying them. What it'll do is prevent some people from buying them from reputable sellers with positive feedback. Now they might have to find some shady dealer who could be selling them rat poison.

Why is 'selling poison instead of drugs' even a logical scare-tactic? Wouldn't even the shadiest of dealers want to keep their customers/hosts/victims around to, you know, keep bleeding money?

And that's why nobody makes fakes or knock-offs, right? Because they'd lose their customer base once their customers purchase the product and find out it is not genuine.

They're are large profit margins to be made off of either cutting drugs (if you're nice, with something inert, if you're not, just with something cheap) or for things like LSD, selling research chemicals that are similar yet different and massively cheaper to manufacture/buy than the real thing.

Re: AlphaBay, the Largest Online 'Dark Market,' Shut Down

#24

Post by Veelox »

Miner49er wrote: post #12

"'The so-called anonymity of the dark web is illusory,' said Acting Administrator Chuck Rosenberg of the DEA." I wonder if this is true, or simply hyperbole. I'm extremely curios on the technical details of this bust. Edit: It appears that some info can be found here https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/982821/downlo... . Look at the section "Alexandre Cazes: Alphabay's Founder and Operator" It looks like t…

It is a little bit of an exaggeration, there are going to be a lot of people that will get caught and a lot that will get away. The point of the statement is to reduce confidence in dark net markets so they are more likely to fail.

Re: AlphaBay, the Largest Online 'Dark Market,' Shut Down

#25

Post by tycho01 »

Mizza wrote: post #13
bdcravens wrote: post #10

Certainly a definitive source coming from the DoJ, but they were shut down several weeks ago, and the arrested founder apparently committed suicide 6 days ago.

This announcement is timed in conjunction with the shutdown of "Hansa Market", which has been operating as a honeypot. They shut down AlphaBay, then users and vendors migrated to Hansa, which was already honeypotted, allowing police to capture login credentials for migrating vendors.

Take-away: if you're doing something illicit you'd better reconsider being dumb about passwords. Or would just user names / IPs have done them in?

Re: AlphaBay, the Largest Online 'Dark Market,' Shut Down

#26

Post by mediocrejoker »

Romanulus wrote: post #14
B1narySunset wrote: post #6

This won't stop people who want drugs from buying them. What it'll do is prevent some people from buying them from reputable sellers with positive feedback. Now they might have to find some shady dealer who could be selling them rat poison.

Why is 'selling poison instead of drugs' even a logical scare-tactic? Wouldn't even the shadiest of dealers want to keep their customers/hosts/victims around to, you know, keep bleeding money?

There is currently an epidemic in Vancouver (among other cities) of overdose deaths from a drug called Fentanyl that is several orders of magnitude more potent than morphine. People want it because it is so potent, but the problem with extreme potency is that the difference between an imperceptible difference and a lethal dose is orders of magnitude smaller in terms of weight.

My guess is 'poison' was a slight hyperbole.

Re: AlphaBay, the Largest Online 'Dark Market,' Shut Down

#27

Post by anoonmoose »

rmwaite wrote: post #2

Don't these people know that they will never kill this. Just like Napster's death, and oink, and what, and so on. Every time they shut one of these down the next one will be harder to shut down.

I mean, you say that, but after having oink go down on me, and more recently what, I've given up on pirating music, and I have to imagine others have done the same. You might be right about the next one being harder to shut down, maybe, but I would also expect the next one to be smaller because of the changing climate.

Edit: I mean, yeah, $10/mo for unlimited streaming was a factor. There are comparisons to the drug trade there, with regards to the number of legal sources increasing over time. My point stands.

Re: AlphaBay, the Largest Online 'Dark Market,' Shut Down

#29

Post by dragonwriter »

Romanulus wrote: post #14
B1narySunset wrote: post #6

This won't stop people who want drugs from buying them. What it'll do is prevent some people from buying them from reputable sellers with positive feedback. Now they might have to find some shady dealer who could be selling them rat poison.

Why is 'selling poison instead of drugs' even a logical scare-tactic? Wouldn't even the shadiest of dealers want to keep their customers/hosts/victims around to, you know, keep bleeding money?

> Wouldn't even the shadiest of dealers want to keep their customers/hosts/victims around to, you know, keep bleeding money?

Most illegal drugs are potentially deadly, and some share of users are going to die from them. Even rationally, cutting with cheaper but more toxic material can be justified if the increase in profit per transaction is sufficient to outweigh the reduction in the expected number of transactions per customer.

Of course, also, drug dealers may not always act rationally, and may not even understand the hazards (either in isolation or due to combination with the drug in question) posed by ingredients used to cut drugs.

Re: AlphaBay, the Largest Online 'Dark Market,' Shut Down

#30

Post by hackerboos »

Veelox wrote: post #24
Miner49er wrote: post #12

"'The so-called anonymity of the dark web is illusory,' said Acting Administrator Chuck Rosenberg of the DEA." I wonder if this is true, or simply hyperbole. I'm extremely curios on the technical details of this bust. Edit: It appears that some info can be found here https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/982821/downlo... . Look at the section "Alexandre Cazes: Alphabay's Founder and Operator" It looks like t…

It is a little bit of an exaggeration, there are going to be a lot of people that will get caught and a lot that will get away. The point of the statement is to reduce confidence in dark net markets so they are more likely to fail.

Hansa has already taken AB's place.
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