Slashdot: Authorities Take Down Hansa Dark Web Market, Confirm AlphaBay Takedown

Authorities Take Down Hansa Dark Web Market, Confirm AlphaBay Takedown
Published on July 20, 2017 at 06:00PM
An anonymous reader writes via Bleeping Computer: Today, in coordinated press releases, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Europol announced the takedown of two Dark Web marketplaces — AlphaBay and Hansa Market. First to fall was the Hansa Market after Dutch officers seized control over their servers located inside one of the country’s hosting providers. Dutch Police seized Hansa servers on June 20, but the site was allowed to operate for one more month as officers gathered more evidence about its clientele. The Hansa honeypot received an influx of new users as the FBI shut down AlphaBay on July 5, a day after it took control over servers on July 4. Europol and the FBI say they collected mountains of evidence such as “usernames and passwords of thousands of buyers and sellers of illicit commodities” and “delivery addresses for a large number of orders.” FBI Active Director McCabe said AlphaBay was ten times larger than Silk Road, with over 350,000 listings. In opposition, Silk Road, which authorities seized in November 2013, listed a meager 14,000 listings for illicit goods and services at the time authorities took down the service.