14 DAY TRIAL // The dark web is full of stuff you can buy, most of them illegal. On top of drugs, guns, and fake passports, you can also purchase a copy of the Silk Road marketplace now, which is particularly worrisome.
The news comes from IntSights Research Group which, while monitoring Jabber, found a vendor specialized in selling licenses for a darknet marketplace software, much like the old Silk Road used to be.
Silk Road, if you'll remember, was the first modern darkweb marketplace, best known as a platform for selling various illegal merchandise, including drugs. Launched in 2011, the site was shut down in October 2013 by the FBI, which arrested Ross William Ulbricht, who was charged with founding the site under the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts. Silk Road 2.0 was brought back online that same year, but it was shut down in 2014.
Sold for $4,500
Nowadays, a clone of this particular marketplace is being sold to whoever wants for about $4,500 in Bitcoin. The offer only includes the bare bones of the marketplace, so it needs to be customized by every buyer.
This is a great reason for concern for law enforcement because it means that once a marketplace is shut down, the actors behind it can bring it back up online and start fresh. Furthermore, this move decentralizes the market, which makes it harder for the police to identify and track the sale of illicit materials on the dark web.
This is also proof that despite Ross Ulbricht being sentenced to life without parole, the citizens of the dark web are not at all afraid of going down the same road. The promise of a pretty penny makes it irresistible to some who believe they can be more careful and safer when it comes to protecting their own identities on the dark web in this day and age than Ulbrich was a few years back.