Only a few Darknet markets were responsible for the stolen data traffic in an 8-month period.
These markets manage to generate the same amount of revenue that an average company in the United States could generate in the same period of time.
Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon to hear news about huge thefts of personal data. However, what happens after our data is stolen? Research suggests that in the same way that it happens with legitimate products. Stolen data passes through a supply chain that runs from producers, through wholesalers, to consumers. This supply chain involves several criminal organizations that take advantage of the markets from dark net Y they earn millions from Dollars selling data, bank account information stolen personal.
Where does the stolen data supply chain begin? With the producers, these would come to be the hackers who exploit vulnerable systems and manage to obtain confidential information. This information can be credit card information, bank account information, Social Security numbers, etc. The wholesalers and distributors who sell the data then advertise it. Ultimately there are consumers who acquire this data to perform various forms of fraud, including fraudulent credit card transactions, identity theft, and phishing attacks.
All these exchanges happen from the dark web. These are websites that look like regular e-commerce sites, but can only be accessed through special browsers or authorization codes.
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darknet markets
Thousands of vendors selling tens of thousands of stolen products have been found in more than 30 darknet marketplaces. This represents revenues of $140 million over a period of 8 months.
In the same way that it happens with e-commerce websites, dark web markets fulfill the function of making it easier for suppliers to connect with potential buyers to facilitate transactions. These darknet marketplaces are known to sell all kinds of illegal products. Something that stands out is that, in order to enter this kind of dark web markets, you need to use special software such as TOR or Onion Router, which provides anonymity and security when browsing.
We can take the well-known case of Silk Road, which started in 2011 and managed to combine TOR with Bitcoin; becoming the most popular darknet marketplace of all time. By the year 2013, this illegal e-commerce site was seized. Its founder, Ross Ulbricht, was sentenced to two life sentences of more than 40 years without the possibility of parole. This exemplary sentence does not seem to have had much of a deterrent impact, as had been expected.
After the conviction, too many markets appeared that tried to fill this gap, in doing so, they managed to create a thriving ecosystem that greatly benefited from the stolen personal data.
A thriving ecosystem of stolen data
A systematic review of known stolen data markets was conducted to understand the size and scope of this illegal online ecosystem. To achieve this, they first had to identify the 30 darknet marketplaces that advertised stolen data products.
Information on stolen data products was then mined from the markets on a weekly basis for about eight months. This occurred from September 1, 2020 to April 30, 2021. The information was used to calculate the number of vendors engaged in the sale of illicit products, the amount advertised, the amount sold, and approximate revenue.
Reaching the conclusion that, in total, we find 2158 suppliers that have announced, even one of the, 96672 product lists in the 30 markets. Vendors and product listings were not evenly distributed across markets.
Approximately, the marketplaces had an average of 110 unique vendors and 3,222 product listings related to stolen data. Marketplaces concluded that 632,207 sales in these marketplaces were completed, generating a total revenue of $140,337,999. There is huge variation between all of these markets. The average would be 26,342 sales and income of $5,847,417 per market.
Analyzing the markets individually
After analyzing the characteristics of the ecosystem, each of the markets was analyzed individually. Thanks to this data, it can be said that a handful of markets were responsible for the traffic of the vast majority of stolen data products. The three largest markets were responsible for 58% of all providers, these markets are: Apollon, WhiteHouse and Agartha. The number of publications was between 38 and 16,296. The number of sales reached 237,512. Regarding income, these varied in the 35-week period, although it reached $91,582,216 for the most successful market: Agartha.
Let’s compare it with a legitimate company. Most midsize companies in the United States earn between $10 million and $1 billion annually. Agartha managed to generate income in 35 weeks that is similar to that of medium-sized companies, achieving $91.6 million. Other marketplaces like Aurora, DeepMart, and WhiteHouse are on track to generate this revenue, like a midsize company, if we gave them a full year to generate it.
The thriving underground economy
The investigations make it clear that the underground economy is thriving thanks to an illicit supply chain enabled by darknet marketplaces. If the data can be stolen so easily, it is very possible that there are different markets for it.
Disrupting these markets directly is quite difficult. However, efforts to prevent customers from making use of the acquired data do leave a glimmer of hope.
In this sense, we believe that artificial intelligence can provide law enforcement agencies, financial institutions and others with the information they need to be able to prevent stolen data from being used for these kinds of acts. The idea is to disrupt the flow of stolen data, disrupting the supply and disrupting the underground economy that benefits from it.
