Dream Market: Are You Famous? Yesterday Europol announced that the FBI, DEA and the Dutch Police cooperated in an investigation aimed at closing AlphaBay and Hansa. Today there are rumors that the Dark Web's third largest illegal market, Dream Market, has stopped working after the authorities have intervened.
Some Redditors have discovered an unencrypted IP address in the Dream source code that many users interpret as an indication that law enforcement agencies may have taken control of the drug market and are actively watching the platform.
While these allegations have not yet been verified by more reliable sources, the underground community coordinators support Reddit for their initial suspicion.
Meanwhile, users are still debating whether this is actually the case. According to many publications, the visible IP in the source code had been there for at least nine months, and some of them were able to trace the address to Swedish company Speedstepper hosting.
Others argue that the appearance μιας δημόσιας διεύθυνσης IP δεν είναι αναμενόμενη συμπεριφορά για το Dark Web. Όπως επιsignalno more paranoid posts, simple errors like these have caused other illegal dark web markets to be shut down in the past.
Mention that a public IP address exists in a website's source codeσελίδαs on the Dark Web, is a very serious vulnerability that makes it easier for the authorities to detect the "service". The authorities can thus locate the servers and gain full control over them without the knowledge of the sellers and buyers.
In fact, this strategy was used and the Dutch police undertook to monitor and finally close the Hansa drug market.
What makes Dream a perfect goal for the authorities is that without AlphaBay and Hansa, drug vendors and buyers have probably turned to that website to continue their business.
Yesterday Dutch Police said that after the closure of AlphaBay, the Hansa drug market saw an eightfold increase in daily trading - from 1.000 to 8.000. The same pattern is very likely to be repeated in the case of Dream.
