AlphaBay Turns 1 Again: Analyzing the Impact of AlphaBay Market

Businesses have had limited time to become acquainted with AlphaBay 2.0 as of yet (DeSnake says it is the same market, not “2.0”). There were no sales made by the suppliers indicated or any other sources that we were aware of. There looks to have been a significant amount of time and work put into the new features, some of which are absolutely novel. In comparison to other marketplaces, AlphaBay claims to be faster and more secure for all parties involved. But considering the market’s foundation, laid on the lessons learned from running a successful market place, probably true.

takedown

The first half of 2022 was marked by takedowns, shut downs, and exit scams of top markets. Today’s version of AlphaBay experienced a relatively slow start, as vendors and buyers questioned the nature of this relaunch, wary of law enforcement involvement. DeSnake’s eagerness to launch AlphaBay with increased security measures, like AlphaGuard and a decentralization project—an effort to sidestep whatever operational security Cazes blundered, eventually leading to his detainment—was met with some skepticism. It is unheard of that a darknet service would decline and discourage donations. A fully-functional darknet marketplace will indeed provide sufficient financial resources in the future; yet refusing them from the start is unreal. AlphaBay now only accepts the cryptocurrency Monero, and heavily promotes that users access it via I2P instead of Tor, calling their Tor services “mirrors” to the main I2P eepsite.

Why use AlphaBay today over other marketplaces?

The surface web domain is likely setup specifically to direct users to a phishing site where their credential information can be stolen. One user openly joked they would stick to purchasing their drugs on social media. DeSnake joined the conversation, creating an account with his moniker on September 12, 2021 in attempts to mitigate the marketplace’s potential reputation damage. DeSnake repeatedly pointed to their vouches from Dread and old PGP key pasted to Ghostbin, paste site. When authorities carried out the warrant and arrest in his apartment in Bangkok, his laptop was left unencrypted and the admin account for the market and server logged in. Authorities also simultaneously executed search warrants for the market’s server hardware located in Quebec, Canada.

The AlphaBay darkweb market has come back to life after an administrator of the original project relaunched it over the weekend. “This is likely one of the most important criminal investigations of the year – taking down the largest dark net marketplace in history. AlphaBay allowed users to sell and buy opioids, including fentanyl and heroin, contributing to a rising drug epidemic in the United States, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said at a news briefing in Washington, D.C. Alphabay Market is the leading darkweb market out there, so naturally, an abundance of services have been laid out for the users. One even more crucial reason for why you should not be supporting/using swappers of any sorts which are integrated or tied to any DNM is the ability of LE to profile exactly who the exchanger services are.

Top Darknet

Another reason of vital importance of why AlphaBay is returning is how everything ended with alpha02. Our searches for the truth have led us to believe that he was Epstein’d (or should we say Mcafee’d more recently?) in a way which shocked everyone. He did not deserve that, I knew him and he really was a nice, bright guy who was genuine about the community and people regardless of what he did.

operational security

Almost all of our servers are kept in locations with high amount of armed guards and multiple security protocols to pass through before accessing the server racks. Our hosting providers are proven bulletproof which means they will not respond to Law Enforcement requests – local or international. Over time I tried to deal with the situation as I had seen many arrests of people in the game for over 20 years some with fatal fates but never one where a person was killed in custody by Law Enforcement.

Markets list

It mimics the genuine AlphaBay Market login page, and prompts the victim to enter his username and password. A client-side check forces the victim to also complete the security code CAPTCHA field, although the phishing site does not care whether the correct value was entered. AlphaBay was run by admins going by the usernames Alpha02/Admin and DeSnake, along with a team of moderators and a public relations manager. Alpha02/Admin was eventually identified as Alexandre Cazes, a Canadian citizen who was found dead in his cell shortly after his arrest in Thailand in 2017. AlphaBay now uses only Monero cryptocurrency and currently has only two featured listings, both for drugs.

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  • Namely the infamous VXcode – our private malware sub-community will be restarted with a few members already in who previously survived the raids and continued operating independently, all making the argument for such communities being stronger and more vital to the scene.
  • AlphaBay mysteriously went offline earlier this month, prompting speculation among its users that authorities had seized the site.
  • The address used by the phishing site will look familiar to regular users of the AlphaBay darknet market, but rather than pointing to an anonymous hidden service, it points to a phishing site hosted by AttractSoft GmbH in Germany.
  • After inputting your password twice, select a 6-digit PIN for purchases.

This site is purely for “educational purposes“, no practical use is encouraged. And the features discussed above are just an outline of what Alphabay market is. As you dig deeper, chances are you’ll be greeted with features which might take you totally by surprise. There always is someone, somewhere able to manipulate the team and get away with your coins.

We do not want to integrate swappers from bitcoin to monero or other currencies to monero. If we do, we would be exposing not only parts of our infrastructure to make the trades but potentially enable LE to halt trades or freeze balances which would result in bad situations for our customers. It is a serious risk which the amateur admins of many of todays most popular marketplaces ignore or are too blind to see only to make a small profit. As the debut of the AlphaBay reboot demonstrates, new darknet markets continue to appear, despite the ever-present threats for users losing funds or even getting arrested.