Moreover, malicious actors can attempt phishing scams to steal your data and identity for extortion. Another essential security feature is that all incoming and outgoing data from the app is encrypted, including any private and public keys involved. The US Naval Research Laboratory developed The Onion Routing (Tor) project in the late 90s.
Why Can’t I Access Onion Sites?
In the next step, we have meticulously gathered official data on Russian regions from the Ministry of Health of Russia, police reports, court reports, and the prison system 27. Figure 1 presents the comprehensive cycle of collecting, modifying, and analyzing data at every step, ensuring the utmost accuracy and reliability. The pathway of the data collection, cleaning, transforming, classifying by drug type, and disaggregating by the regions is presented in Figure 1. PwC in their “What’s important to CISOs in 2024” report found that building cyber resilience was a priority for 2024.
Vendor Ecosystem
Users leverage these platforms to organize protests, whistleblow, share survival guides, or share files P2P. Some markets even sell privacy tools, but you are more likely to run across counterfeit prescription pills and stolen identities. With the onion browser, you can access ordinary HTTPS websites on the web. This is a great way to improve your privacy because Tor isolates each website you visit, meaning third-party trackers and ISPs can’t reveal your identity. Onion links have no regular domain names registered under the domain name registry.
How To Find New, Active Dark Web Links
Despite most darknet markets banning the sale of fentanyl in their terms of service, nearly all mainstream Western-facing markets have vendors that sell fentanyl-laced products. While it received a relatively small share of large retail purchases as shown in the previous chart, Abacus Market is one such example. Though many customers are concentrated in Australia, Abacus has vendors and customers around the world, including the United States. As a criminal market, it is deeply intertwined with a wide range of criminal activities, including cyber-dependent and financial crimes. As these illicit economies continue to flourish, tackling and dismantling the criminal networks involved will require more than technological advancements.
Case Study: Hydra Market’s Migration To Telegram
Ransomware actors and fraudsters are leveraging technological advancements, including cross-chain bridges and artificial intelligence, to bypass detection and scale their operations. Incoming crypto volumes to Chinese drug precursor manufacturers have seen a significant decline, from USD 27.6 million in 2023 to USD 17.0 million in 2024. This drop may be driven in part by stronger actions from the Chinese government following the Biden-Xi summit of November 2023. The summit resulted in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) banning a range of fentanyl precursors and shutting down some suppliers, followed by a further ban of several nitazenes and analogs in July 2024. As a result, drug precursor manufacturers have begun to shift to new analogs and substances, while adopting alternative methods to cryptocurrency to obscure their financial footprints.
Marketing
In 2019, on an average day, the total quantity of drugs available for purchase on the darknet, in batches of 5 g or less, amounted to 124 kg. It was a period of COVID-19 restrictions, so we have data on the decreasing amounts of drugs distributed monthly in Russia during COVID-19 restrictions. A strong and significant correlation between the quantities of heroin for sale and lethal overdoses or fatal poisoning was established. Data for the study are publicly available from the Hydra darknet marketplace and from official Russian health statistics. The use of these datasets is in accordance with ethical standards for research involving publicly available information. Regardless, the DNM criminal economy continues to proliferate unimpeded by the intervention of law enforcement.
DuckDuckGo — A Dark Web Search Engine
First things first, always use strong and different passwords for each account you open. As Telegram has end-to-end encryption and anonymous profiles, it makes it an ideal choice for threat actors and hackers to take advantage of. Unfortunately, the dark web hosts not only explicit but also deeply illegal and disturbing content.
Trusted Directories And Forums (stay Away From Hidden Wiki)
This ongoing innovation ensures that these platforms remain at the forefront of secure and efficient drug trade, offering users a seamless and anonymous shopping experience. In 2025, the darknet drug trade continues to evolve, with markets expanding their offerings to include a wider range of products. This growth is supported by the increasing sophistication of security measures, ensuring that users can engage in transactions with confidence. The combination of advanced technology and community-driven accountability makes these platforms a reliable choice for secure trading. Bitcoin remains the primary currency for transactions, providing a seamless and secure payment method. The integration of multi-signature wallets and escrow services further minimizes risks, ensuring that both buyers and sellers are protected throughout the transaction process.
- The top selling and highest rated store on BlackSprut is ‘Sliviki Shop’.
- The operation was conducted by Department 3 of the Immigration Department, led by Colonel Jirapong Ruchiradamrongchai.
- In 2025, the darknet continues to serve as a robust platform for secure and reliable drug trade, with several markets standing out due to their advanced features and user-centric designs.
- Launched in September 2022, Torzon Market operates on the Tor network and features over 11,600 illegal products, including drugs and hacking tools.
- The site seeks to liberate information by making it free to individuals and institutions.
Classic darknet markets sell diverse illegal goods; data stores focus on leaked or stolen data like credentials, databases, and ID records. Despite growing crackdowns from law enforcement agencies, the dark web remains a hotbed of criminal activity, offering everything from drugs to stolen data. It’s a hidden collective of sites that you could only access through a special browser. Since all activity on the dark web is anonymous by default, it is definitely where the murkiest transactions on the internet take place.
If you don’t take the necessary measures, many unsavory activities can expose you to unnecessary risks. Remember that illegal activities can still incriminate you, whether you are using a Tor browser. For example, you shouldn’t pirate copyrighted material, engage in terrorism, or share illegal pornography.
It can only interact with the gateway, the most effective method by which the browser protects user applications from learning a device’s IP address. The only difference is that it passes your traffic through random nodes before reaching the destination. This means your activities cannot be traced or your browser history exposed.
Another darknet market known for facilitating fentanyl sales to the United States was Canada-based AlphaBay. A once-sizable illicit enterprise that began in 2014, AlphaBay was closed by authorities in 2017 and then reopened in 2021. The last version of the market operated until February of 2023, and a month after that closure, a former AlphaBay vendor pled guilty to distributing fentanyl that caused fatal overdoses in Oregon.
These platforms keep changing their addresses to avoid DDoS attacks or law enforcement agencies. Blockchain.info (now Blockchain.com) is a popular cryptocurrency wallet and blockchain explorer service (one of the first sites to launch on the dark web). It was initially created to provide additional security and eliminate cryptocurrency theft. It’s a wallet, explorer service, not a dark web marketplace itself, but still a helpful resource. RiseUp is a top dark web website that offers secure email services and a chat option. It was created in 1999 as a secure communication platform for people and groups working on liberatory social change.
