The Dark Web: Becoming Trendy? Yep
January 4, 2018
I track articles which suggest that the Dark Web is becoming trendy. My fave for 2017 was the supermodel who was to be auctioned as a sex slave via the Dark Web. Fake news? Who knows. One lucky person of interest faces a trial in Italy.
The leader in the Dark Web trend making is Wired Magazine and its story “An Interview With Darkside, Russia’s Favorite Dark Web Drug Lord.” The Dark Web Notebook team has no easy way to tell if the write up about the interview with a Dark Web drug kingpin is real or more like the information distributed by some other “real” journalism outfits.
We did note three interesting comments in the write up. Let’s tally these and remind you to read the original story:
- Darkside says that RAMP makes around $250,000 a year from its brisk drug trafficking business. [With the shuttering of Dark Web drug markets, the estimated revenue seems low. The dealer subscription service is a nice angle. The DarkCyber report about the economics of online drug trafficking suggest that RAMP is an outlier both in its longevity (five years of operation) and its approach to business.]
- Darkside says that he favors human intermediated processes, not smart software. [One issue with humans is that they talk. Presumably Darkside has a way to zip the lips of his colleagues, subscribers, and customers. However, he did allegedly “talk” with Wired. No word on whether the information was obtained face to face, via a phone call, or a digital channel like encrypted email. Loose lips sink ships and Dark Web drug markets.]
- Darkside does not “mess with the CIA.” [This is interesting. A number of enforcement agencies are working to shutter Dark Web contraband sites. Examples range from Interpol to the Dutch authorities, German and Czech Republic investigators, and, of course, US enforcement entities. How does Darkside know which investigator is from what country? Not even some of the parallel enforcement authorities know what other countries’ agents are doing on a daily basis. We have seen a list of more than 1,500 Dark Web sites operated by police. Maybe RAMP is such a spoofed site?]
Interesting information. Now about that “real” news thing.
Stephen E Arnold, January 4, 2018
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