This appeared last week:
US law enforcement takes down site hosting Medicare data sale
AlphaBay, Hansa darknet marketplaces shut down
21 July, 2017 10:23
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the Dutch National Police, and Europol have cracked down on darknet markets, shutting down two of the major Tor-concealed marketplaces for illegal goods and services: Hansa and AlphaBay.
The US Department of Justice overnight announced that it had seized AlphaBay, the darknet market site that hosted the so-called ‘Medicare Machine’ service.
AlphaBay has been offline since 5 July.
The Medicare Machine was a service that offered to obtain the Medicare card details of any Australian when provided with his or her name and date of birth.
The Australian Federal Police are investigating the service and the government has commissioned a review into the HPOS service believed to be the source of the data.
AlphaBay was considered to be the largest darknet market. The site’s alleged operator, Canadian Alexandre Cazes, was arrested in Thailand earlier this month. He died in custody, apparently taking his own life.
The Department of Justice said investigators had found Cazes' personal Hotmail email address, Pimp_Alex_91@hotmail.com in the header information of a welcome email sent to new AlphaBay users in December 2014.
AlphaBay was believed to have more than 200,000 users and 40,000 vendors. It supported transactions using a range of cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Monero and Ethereum.
“This is likely one of the most important criminal case of the year,” US attorney-general Jeff Sessions said at a press conference announcing the seizure.
More here:
This sounds to me like real progress. It really seems to be important to shut down as much of the dark web as is possible to reduce all sorts of criminality!
David.
2 comments:
The leak hasn't been plugged, just the shop front where the data is sold from
And I am sure another shop will open. It is this statement I find interesting
The US Department of Justice overnight announced that it had seized AlphaBay, the darknet market site that hosted the so-called ‘Medicare Machine’ service.
The Dutch had replicated the service for near on a year and had trap up addresses for quite sometime. Considering Governments created the mess, you have to question these Agencies honesty and ethics.
I guess the dark web is the webs version of the cane toad
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