Nearly 150 people who bought or sold drugs or weapons on the “dark web” were arrested worldwide in one of the largest operations ever recorded against this “dark Internet” – announced Europol on Tuesday (26).
“This operation, called Dark HunTOR, was integrated by a series of isolated but complementary actions in Australia, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland, United Kingdom and the United States”, detailed Europol, in a statement.
The police action was developed after the dismantling of the “DarkMarket” platform in January, in Germany. It was considered by investigators to be the biggest selling point in the cyber underground market.
In the United States alone, 65 people were arrested; another 47 in Germany; 24 in Great Britain; and four, in Italy and the Netherlands, among other countries.
Some detainees were considered “high-value targets” by Europol.
The agents also confiscated 26.7 million euros ($31 million) in cash and virtual currencies, as well as 45 weapons and 234 kilos of drugs.
Italian police also closed the “DeepSea” and “Berlusconi” markets, which “together accounted for more than 100,000 illegal advertisements,” said Europol, which coordinated the operation with the judicial agency Eurojust.
The arrest in January of the alleged “DarkMarket” operator, a 34-year-old Australian imprisoned on the German-Denmark border, “provided investigators around the world with a treasure trove of evidence,” according to Europol.
The dismantling of “DarkMarket” – which sold drugs of all kinds, as well as counterfeit money, stolen or counterfeit credit card data, anonymous chips and even computer viruses – was the result of an operation in September 2019, also in Germany, against several illegal “darknet” services, called “Cyberbunker”, the court reported at the time.
This illegal data center, housed in a former North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bunker in southwestern Germany, was suspected of having housed several drug-selling platforms as well as servers used for trafficking pornography child, or cyber attacks.
Since then, Europol’s European Cybercrime Center (EC3) has compiled information to identify key objectives, the agency explained.
The “dark web”, a parallel version of the web that guarantees the anonymity of users, is increasingly pursued by international police.
“The purpose of operations like this is to warn criminals operating on the ‘dark web’ that the law enforcement community has the resources and global partners to expose them and hold them accountable for their illegal activities, including in areas of the ‘dark web'” , said the deputy director of operations of Europol, Jean-Philippe Lecouffe.
For Rolf van Wegberg, a cybercrime researcher at Delft University of Technology, the operation establishes a change in police action against alleged criminals operating on the Internet.
“In the past, this type of operation was aimed at shutting down traders in these markets, but now we see police departments chasing the main sellers,” he said.
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