The dark web is a part of the internet accessible only through specialised anonymity-providing software. It is used by criminals to exchange illicit goods and services. The most popular product is recreational and pharmaceutical drugs, but there are also markets for stolen identities, counterfeit goods, hacking tools, ransomware as a service, and money laundering. The markets are financed by cryptographic payments, primarily Bitcoin. The value of these transactions has increased dramatically in recent years, but they represent only a small portion of global illicit commerce.
The resilience of these marketplaces is a significant concern for law enforcement agencies and financial institutions. However, there is little agreement on how to address the problem, because the dark web is global in scope and operates outside of traditional legal channels. One approach is to improve information sharing among law enforcement agencies and financial institutions, which has already been successful at identifying high-value targets. Another is to target the platforms where illegal transactions occur, and this is being attempted through a collaboration between Interpol and European law enforcement agencies called Operation Monopoly.
These marketplaces are Dark net markets often run by criminals, and it is not uncommon for a market to close after being hacked or subjected to a law enforcement raid. The shutdowns can be costly to vendors and users, and the reopening of a marketplace may be delayed as the administrators try to rebuild their reputation and attract customers. Despite these challenges, dark marketplaces remain a viable source of illicit products and services.
To understand how these marketplaces operate, we analysed the behaviour of a number of them. We found that their revenue is dependent on a number of factors, such as whether they are a conventional marketplace focused on drug sales or a fraud-focused darknet market, and which products and services they sell. Furthermore, we found that the behaviour of a market after it suffers a disruption can be predicted by studying how its users migrate between coexisting marketplaces.
Using the same data sets as our previous work, we studied how these migrations occur after unexpected marketplace closure and police raids. We found that dark marketplace closures, regardless of the cause, are accompanied by a rapid increase in drug listings on coexisting marketplaces. This suggests that a large percentage of dark marketplace users are able to move between these markets and continue their transactions.
We also found that the profitability of a marketplace is determined by its market share and the percentage of its user base that is sourced from its geographic region. This supports the hypothesis that geographically based darknet markets are vulnerable to localised law enforcement action, but that they can recover rapidly from this through user migration. This study provides new insight into the resilience of these marketplaces, and we hope that our findings will be of interest to those who are interested in monitoring darknet activity. Future research directions include investigating how these patterns change over time, exploring whether the effects of a marketplace closure can be mitigated by decentralised marketplaces, and examining the different types of user behaviour that influence migration choices following a marketplace shutdown.
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