Denver, CO – February 14, 2020 – DarkOwl LLC, a Denver-based darknet data provider, is proud to announce the roll-out of our new Vision User Interface (UI). The DarkOwl Vision platform continues to automatically, continuously, and anonymously collect, index, and rank darknet, deep web, and high-risk surface net data.

DarkOwl Director of Product, Sarah Prime noted, “We have many initiatives planned for 2020, and this is just the beginning; this new design makes it easier and more efficient to find threats and compromised data on the darknet. We’re excited to continue adding features to better serve our customers.”

Vision’s new UI improves simplicity of use and allows for more intuitive navigation of our darknet collection. Aligning with modern design principles, the enhanced UI also allows for improved monitoring by making it simpler to automate searches, one of our most heavily used features. By making other improvements such as allowing users to access all of their data from the first page and streamlining commonly used search tools such as Filters, our new UI makes our data more accessible and actionable than ever.

“I am very proud of our product and development teams for the work they have put in on this new release. Our new UI is even more intuitive, faster, and will provide a range of new tools to parse the larger amount of data we now collect and index from the dark net. This is a big step for DarkOwl’s customers.” said Mark Turnage, CEO of DarkOwl.

Media Contact: [email protected]

About DarkOwl DarkOwl was founded in 2016 with the mission of collecting the broadest dataset of darknet content available in the cyberdefense industry and making that data both accessible and valuable to its clients. By empowering its customers to have eyes on the darknet, DarkOwl enables organizations to fully understand their security posture, detect potential breaches, mitigate them quickly, and investigate even the furthest and most obscure reaches of the internet. .

In July of 2019, 7.5 TB worth of documents that were stolen from a Russian FSB contractor known as SyTech were published on the darknet by the hacker group 0v1ru$. Included in the documents is a project known as “HOPE,” which contains contents focused on how Russia intends to control the flow of information within and outside of their borders. While the notion and development of nation-wide intranets that exist in isolation from the global internet at the behest of nation-state authorities is nothing new (and in fact it has become increasingly common), it remains noteworthy – largely due to its association with politically oppressive regimes.

After discovering the leaked SyTech documents on DarkOwl Vision (pictured below), our analysts decided to take a closer look at project HOPE due to its relevancy to decentralized internets (including darknets). Upon conducting this analysis, DarkOwl researchers determined that Russia has been developing some of these plans as far back as 2012 and have concluded that it is very likely that HOPE was the foundation for Russia’s new Sovereign Internet Law, which was recently enacted on November 1st, 2019.

The SyTech leak

WHO IS SYTECH?

SyTech was a Russian Federal Security Service (a.k.a. the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB) contractor registered in Moscow that primarily focused on electronic and signals intelligence research. Publicly disclosed customers of the FSB include the national satellite communications operator JSC RT Komm.ru and the analytical center of the judicial department under the Supreme Court of Russia. Other non-public projects were commissioned by military unit no. 71330, which is believed to be part of the 16th Directorate of the FSB – who were accused of sending files with spyware to Ukrainian military and intelligence agencies in March 2015. Ironically, SyTech is also located in the same building the 16th Directorate of the KGB of the USSR previously occupied. Their 2018 public contract value was 40 million rubles, or $622,631 USD.

SYTECH HACKED

On July 13, 2019, SyTech suffered what BBC Russia called “possibly the largest data leak in the history of Russian intelligence services” when a group of hackers identified as 0v1ru$ gained access to an active directory server, stole 7.5TB of data, and defaced their webpage with a “yoba-face” (pictured to the right).

Though the image was first posted to 4chan in 2008, it is now most prominently associated with this breach, as evidenced by the spike on GoogleTrends on the date the hack was published. Analysis of screenshots posted by 0v1ru$ suggests that the tools used to gain access were ticketer.py, PSExec, and proxychains.

The leaked data includes 20 non-public IT projects ordered by Russian special services and departments. 0v1ru$ copied the data, deleted it from SyTech servers according to Twitter screenshots (pictured), and shared the documents with Digital Revolution, a separate (to our knowledge) hacking group who successfully breached Kvant Research Institute in 2018. Digital Revolution shared the documents with journalists, published screenshots of information on their Twitter – while mocking Russian officials – and the documents became widely available across the darknet.

In the aftermath of these events, 0v1ru$’s Twitter account was deleted, and there has been no word from them since the day of the hack. It is unknown if they deleted their Twitter account or if Twitter removed the account. Their motive is unclear, though it seems the group was small in membership. Digital Revolution published a written piece encouraging dissent against Russian authorities in the wake of these documents in early August 2019, and have been silent since. SyTech’s website has been offline since the defacement and no official statement regarding the hack or the future of SyTech was published. It is unclear if SyTech still exists, has been restructured, or dissolved after the leak.

There was no comment from the FSB, though BBC Russia reports no state secrets were leaked. Some have noted that this is another example of contractors being the weakest link in maintaining secrecy during research and development. 

PROJECT HOPE

Though media widely reported on the SyTech hack itself, very few individuals or media outlets have examined the contents of the leaked documents. The level of detail, total amount of information, and potentially compromising information is not apparent from reading currently published reports; in most cases, a brief summary of a handful of the 20 projects is provided, and often, these summaries are not in English. DarkOwl analysts have obtained these documents and conducted analysis to: 

1)    Examine the extent of leaked information – were only project summaries leaked, or entire proprietary technical plans?

2)   Examine the impact of leaked information – did this leak impact or result in any legal or social issues in the future?

3)   Examine the utility in analyzing leaked information – does the resources expended to acquire and analyze these documents produce actionable intel, open further lines of inquiry, or increase our knowledge base surrounding these issues?

To accomplish these goals, DarkOwl analysts examined one of the twenty leaked projects: надежда, or Nadezhda, which translates in English to HOPE.

It is apparant that HOPE’s main directive was to develop a method of disconnecting Russia from the global internet, while allowing information to still travel within Russia; in other words, they sought to develop their own nation-wide intranet. Purportedly, this would aid in protection from a foreign cyberattack – allowing Russian authorities to theoretically “unplug” Russia from the global internet to halt foreign attacks – if the technology developed via this project proved successful.

This work was carried out between April 1, 2013 and October 31, 2014 and was funded by Russia’s military unit no. 71330.

Once extracted, it was discovered that, unsurprisingly, the entire HOPE folder was in Russian. The folder contained 5 Microsoft Word documents, and a PowerPoint presentation. The bulk of the information from the documents was translated via Google Translate, though Russian translators assisted in the interpretation of potentially inaccurate or mistranslated words. One document in the leak indicates that it is likely all of these documents are components of a larger “Scientific and Technical Report” on the HOPE project, totaling 519 pages, 82 figures, 201 tables, 110 literature sources, and 7 appendices.

A CLOSER LOOK AT THE CONTENT OF THE DOCUMENTS

The SyTech developed PowerPoint presentation appears to be a summary of the research and development conducted during the HOPE project. It is likely this was created near the end of the project in 2014 and presented to military unit no. 71330. It summarizes the work completed by SyTech, but also names and summarizes the work done by other collaborators on the HOPE project. According to this, the collaborators of HOPE are:

• SyTech, who primarily focused on the visualization and analysis of cross-border routes for Internet traffic

• The RZNF Federal State Unitary Enterprise, who worked on a project codenamed “Nadezhda-T”, aimed at monitoring and filtering traffic

• Institute for Security and Information Analysis, responsible for compiling the work done on HOPE and testing it and training future users

The presentation also lists the sources of information they used, which are primarily in English and are publicly available. The results indicated success in achieving their research goals at a small scale but raises concerns about scalability.

The Word documents are components of a larger “Scientific and Technical Report” on the HOPE project, written at various stages in the project. One of the final documents suggest interim and final reports, thus there is some degree of overlap in the information included in these documents.

The first document is only 2 pages and seems to have been created at the genesis of the HOPE project. It was likely created in November or December of 2012 and states a generic goal of “studying the principles of cross border routing on the internet”. It also states goals of examining vulnerabilities in TCP and Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), routing traffic through trusted government nodes, and the storage and analysis of traffic through these nodes.

All other documents are components of the Scientific and Technical Report at various stages in development. Two of these documents are highly technical examinations of topics such as traffic routing tests, BGP tests, and development of special visualization software.

Of particular interest for this post is a 260-page document that indicates it is the final version of the Scientific and Technical Report. This appears to have been delivered to the customer at the same time the PowerPoint was created and delivered. It includes details such as:

• the required software and OS

• shared libraries

• server platforms

• the inclusion of government connections.

There is also some discussion of the use of deep packet inspection to analyze traffic, and criteria that may be used to filter and direct traffic. The report suggests that the research goals were met on a small scale; this includes the development of “state machines” provided to ISPs and includes diagrams of the machines and their functionality.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

These leaked documents show that SyTech and others were early in the development and testing phases of a project that was concerned with monitoring internet traffic, routing traffic based on state-developed criteria, and gaining control over internet access within the borders of Russia. In 2013-2014, when this project was underway, most work focused on what appears to be proof-of- concept/prototype development. To our knowledge, this was not tested on a larger scale, though the documents do indicate some concern over scalability. However, the PowerPoint indicated large-scale testing would be the responsibility of a non-SyTech body, thus, wouldn’t be included in these leaked project files. It should be noted that involvement of other agencies in the HOPE project has not been reported in media reports to date. 

Analysis of the technical documents suggest that control of internet traffic would be primarily accomplished by state sponsored BGP hijacking. A full analysis of this process is outside the scope of this post, but effectively, BGP hijacking uses the assumption that interconnected networks are telling the truth about which IP addresses they own to maliciously reroute internet traffic. In layman terms, it has been compared to changing out the exit signs on a stretch of freeway and rerouting traffic to incorrect exits, if no one were watching the freeway signs. BGP is managed by ISPs; considering the extensive research SyTech conducted into BGP traffic and the installation of technology at Russian ISPs, it is a strong possibility that BGP hijacking is the foundation for Russia’s plans to control the internet.

Since HOPE was carried out, there has been a great amount of reporting and concern surrounding the development of Russia’s nation-wide intranet. DarkOwl analysts believe it is likely that HOPE became the foundation for what is now known as Russia’s Sovereign Internet Law.

Russia’s Sovereign Internet Law

On November 1, 2019, Russia’s Sovereign Internet Law took effect, giving Russian government officials a higher degree of control over the nation’s internet access and content. Ostensibly, the law is aimed to protect the nation’s cybersecurity by allowing government officials to block access to content when an “emergency” has been declared.

POLICY CHANGES DUE TO ENACTMENT OF THE LAW

In practice, the law has the largest impact on internet service providers located in Russia. Under this law, ISPs are required to:

1.         Install equipment that routes Russian internet traffic through state-controlled servers in the country

2.         Install equipment capable of deep-packet inspection, which is capable of not only identifying the source of traffic but the filtration of content

The first requirement is aimed at creating a new DNS system that can filter traffic in a way that data sent between Russians reaches its destination while any traffic directed towards foreign computers is discarded. Theoretically, this allows for Russia to essentially “unplug” from the global internet while nation-wide Runet service is uninterrupted. This is purportedly to protect Russia in the event of foreign cyberattacks or sanctions that attempt to isolate the country’s internet presence; for example, when US Cyber Command cut off internet access to the infamous Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency in efforts to defend the 2018 US Midterm Elections against foreign interference. Notably, this new DNS system is not expected to take effect until 2021.

The second requirement allows state regulators to filter traffic and block what it wants on a granular level; elements as small as individual social media and forum posts can be examined and blocked based on the content of the messaging. Deep packet inspection (DPI) technology is universally used by ISPs to prioritize traffic and block unwanted protocols; however, in this case, the traffic is not controlled by the ISPs but rather Russian communications regulator Roskomnadzor. The language surrounding this aspect of the law is, likely purposefully, vague; the law gives regulators full discretion to decide what constitutes a security threat or dissent that may harm the “stability, security, and integrity” of the internet. According to open source reporting, tests of Russian DPI technology will continue in the Urals region until the end of 2019.

PUBLIC RECEPTION OF THE LAW

The degree to which the Russian government can control the flow of information due to this law has drawn strong reactions from both the Russian populace and international community.

According to research conducted by the Russian state-sponsored pollster, VTsIOM, 52% of Russians indicated they were opposed to the sovereign internet bill and the internet should play a role in “uniting the whole world”, while only 23% believed the internet should be limited to the country’s borders. Rallies opposing the bill in Moscow, Voronezh, and Khabarovsk were “some of the biggest protests” in years, totaling over 15,000 people in Moscow alone (though police estimated only 6500 attendees). The law has often been referred to as a digital Iron Curtain, harkening back to the Cold War separation of the USSR and the West.

Outside of Russia, the law has been almost universally condemned. Ten human rights, media, and Internet freedom organizations released a joint statement criticizing the law and calling on President Putin to not sign it – though he did one week after publication of the statement. They and others suggest that the law does not satisfactorily define what constitutes security threats and appropriate responses and lends the government too much discretion in how these laws will be enforced. There are also no legal protections for internet users to prevent ISPs from accessing, collecting, and selling the information gleaned via DPI. Many view this new law as continuing the erosion of internet freedoms in Russia; Freedom House categorizes Russia as “Not Free” and argues internet freedom is continuing to decline because of this law and other policies. For instance, according to a report from the Agora International Human Rights Group, someone in Russia was imprisoned for their online activities every 8 days in 2017.

CRITICISMS OF THE LAW

Moving beyond criticisms based in human rights and social issues surrounding the law, numerous technical experts are skeptical that enforcement of the law is currently possible. Both the establishment of a nation-wide intranet and DPI inspection of all traffic faces numerous, possibly insurmountable, technical hurdles.

Many experts are quick to point out that the Russian development of their alternate DNS system is dissimilar to China’s Great Firewall; whereas China’s internet was developed via a small number of state-run network operators – with a goal of restricting access in mind – Russia’s internet has developed freely over the last 30 years. Undoing that development would be a monumental task; the more developed a country’s infrastructure, the more laborious the blackout procedure becomes. David Belson, the senior director of Internet Research and Analysis at Internet Society, told NPR:

“..there were dozens of existing internet exchange points in Russia, some of which have hundreds of participants… basically its challenging – if not impossible, I think – to completely isolate the Russian Internet.”

Twelve organizations oversee the root servers for the current DNS system; zero of these are located in Russia. Undoing those global network connections will be difficult, and this kind of regulatory model could risk damaging the reliability of internet connections in Russia. According to Sophos:

“Internet traffic isn’t like a pipe that can be turned on and off or diverted at will. It functions as a cooperative system in which Russian ISPs must peer traffic that is heading to other destinations in ways that belie simple concepts of internal and external, good and bad.”

Some predict that, if nation-wide separation from the global internet proves impossible, it will be more likely that specific regions within the country can be disconnected for short periods of time.

Previous attempts at using law to forbid a form of technology has failed; last year, Russia attempted to ban the messaging app Telegram for refusing to provide encryption keys to Russian authority, to practically no effect, other than simultaneously blocking access to allowed content. Experts also point out that the rhetoric surrounding this bill regards protection from foreign cyberattacks, yet the DPI requirement of the law only serves to increase control of internet within Russia. Law-abiding users will notice the change; the installation of DPI equipment across all ISPs in Russia has been compared to the crush of passengers trying to get on the Moscow metro at rush hour.

There is no consensus among experts what impact this law will have long-term; it may lead to the types of humans rights violations watchdogs are worried about, or it could cause no change at all. It is also uncertain how this law may impact Russian darknet activity, even among Russian darknet users (Figure 8). Activity may increase as users seek to circumvent the newly enacted law; it may decrease if the technology implemented is sophisticated enough to limit dark web activity. Theoretically, BGP hijacking could manipulate and control entry relay node traffic which would destroy the anonymity provided by Tor for Russian users.

Russia has a sizable presence on the dark web and is the most common foreign language in DarkOwl’s database; DarkOwl will continue to monitor this activity for any changes or modifications of dark web use.

Final takeaways: Project HOPE, Russia’s new restrictive law, and the internet as a human rights issue

CONCLUSIONS REGARDING THE LEAKED PROJECT HOPE DOCUMENTS

Upon revisiting the questions we sought to answer during our analysis of the leaked documents, we were able to come to several conclusions:

1.         Examine the extent of leaked information – were only project summaries leaked, or entire proprietary technical plans? 

Hackers leaked extensive documentation surrounding the HOPE project on the dark web. The leak included project summaries, supporting technical documents, test results, and the final customer product. It is clear there was much more leaked than what was reported via most media sources and raises numerous questions over what is contained in the leaks of other projects from SyTech.

2.         Examine the impact of leaked information – did this leak impact or result in any legal or social issues in the future?

Although it cannot be directly linked, the preponderance of evidence suggests that HOPE was a precursor to the Russia Sovereign Internet Law. The stated goals and methods discussed in HOPE directly reflect the realities of the Sovereign Internet Law. Though the official response minimized the impact of these leaks, the documents demonstrate a clear connection to future legal and social developments. 

3.         Examine the utility in analyzing leaked information – does the resources expended to acquire and analyze these documents produce actionable intel, open further lines of inquiry, or increase our knowledge base surrounding these issues? 

The examination of these documents provided insights unavailable in any other report or analysis of the SyTech hack. Considering the information obtained and that HOPE likely resulted in a divisive law, future research should be conducted on the other leaked documents in efforts to predict other future policy or technological development.

THE INTERNET AS A HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUE

The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has consistently stressed the importance of taking a human rights based approach to internet access. In June of 2016, the UNHRC passed resolution A/HRC/38/L.20, addressing “the promotion, protection, and enjoyment of human rights on the internet.” The resolution affirms that the “same rights people have offline must be protected online,” and outlines the perceived importance of internet access to the human rights protections of the citizens of member nations. 

Press coverage of the initiative reported that, despite passing with consensus, Russia and China opposed this resolution and sought to remove language relating to the “human-rights based approach” to internet access. This is relatively unsurprising; China’s “Great Firewall” stratagem to internet censorship is well-documented by academics, human rights watchdogs, and western media. Furthermore, the notion of free access and usage of the internet has been under attack by various nation-states, as reports of government-backed nationwide internet outages, social media blackouts during military conflict, the criminalization of dissent, and the murder of bloggers and journalists have only increased in the public eye since the passing of this resolution. 

The UNHRC further demonstrated this commitment to internet freedom in July of 2018 when they reaffirmed the internet protection resolution – with no States formally dissociating from the language in the resolution. However, the emphasis on protecting human rights online as well as offline is minimized in this resolution, and the United States no longer is listed as a participating State.

Further developments have shown no signs of Russia slowing down in their pursuit of state-controlled internet, often hiding behind a veil of curbing cybercrime. Other nations such as Iran have followed suit and have begun exercising control over internet access.

WILL THESE NEW RESTRICTIONS LEAD TO AN INCREASE IN DARK WEB USERSHIP?

In name, the Russian Sovereign Internet Law is already in effect. However, the social impact from this law will not be felt until later, and it is uncertain how this law will alter the amount and type of activity on the dark web, if at all.

Fundamental changes in the structure of the internet don’t occur overnight, or over just a few years – research, development, and implementation of this technology took nearly a decade via the HOPE project, and still isn’t close to completion. If we want to see what is coming next, it may be best to look at similar projects that are being researched now rather than wait for their deployment.

An introductory overview of Nation-State Actors on the dark web

One defining characteristic of the dark web is its association with criminal activity. In general, it is known as a haven for drug and gun dealers, hackers, pornographers, scam artists and other criminals. But, this stereotype may at times be oversimplified. While there are some objectively clear cut parameters of criminality, there also is a grey area comprised of politically motivated operatives who may or may not be committing crimes as commonly defined, but are nevertheless acting to influence and further an agenda of their own making. These groups, including Nation-State Actors – state-sponsored hackers with a cyber warfare mission – are worth examining in their own right.

Why Nation-States turn to the dark web

The dark web provides an anonymous environment in which anyone can operate.  Of importance and relevance to Nation-States, a number of key objectives can be carried out under this cloak of anonymity. Nation-State Cyber Actors will utilize the dark web to conduct intelligence collection and source development, government and corporate espionage, exploit development and testing, disinformation operations for geopolitical influence, infrastructure disruption, and financial gain.

• Intelligence and Espionage — The early beginnings of cyber-based information operations were conducted by the US government’s National Security Agency (NSA) and China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA). While the NSA used information operations for covert intelligence collection from foreign adversaries, China is well known for its extensive espionage and intellectual property theft activities with much success. This includes surveillance of its own citizens and their use of the dark web to attempt to circumvent state controls.

• Infrastructure Disruption — Nation-State-funded cyber campaigns against other Nation-States has become wide-spread, principally targeting networks containing sensitive government or corporate information and strategic plans. In late 2015, Russia demonstrated how kinetic attacks conducted against critical infrastructure (e.g., telecommunications, utilities, etc.) and information outlets could cripple a Nation-State, with hacks against Ukraine during on-going conflicts over Crimea. Additional cyber-based attempts to infiltrate key US utilities infrastructure has been detected and reported by the US Department of Homeland Security and multiple cybersecurity researchers.

• Activism and Propaganda — Whether it is religious differences in the Middle East or ideological differences in the South China Sea, political activism and propaganda have been an effective weapon of Nation-States for decades. Given society’s shift to persistent digital communications, cyber has become a preferred medium for this type of activity. Nation-States, both large and small, have used cyber activity to do everything from promoting their agendas, to propping up proxy states both in the dark web and across social media platforms.

• Exploit Acquisition and Development – Many blackhat exploits are discussed in dark web forums and encrypted chats, as frequently observed on DarkOwl Vision. System vulnerabilities are detailed and shared for all types of critical operating systems and unix distributions. The dark web provides a valuable resource for researching and testing source code anonymously.

• Profitability – Countries facing extreme US and UN economic sanctions are turning to the dark web for financial gain. In recent years, North Korea has been successful in launching nation-wide banking system hacks across east Asia.

What Nation-State Actors are significant in the dark web

Over the past several years, DarkOwl researchers have noted that Nation-States are increasingly using the dark web as an information-based battlefield for a variety of key intelligence and cyber military campaigns. In the era of digital information operations, the United States, Russia and China are the primary Nation-State actors discussed in mass media and open source reporting. While it is true the United States, Russia and China still clearly lead in cyber-focused financial resources and manpower, there has been a significant rise of less well known Nation-States due to the release of advanced exploits leaked in recent years and available reverse engineering.

Analysis: Estimating the most powerful Nation-State Actors on the dark web (by country)

Background on global cyber warfare climate:

Modern cyber warfare has a much older pedigree than one would suspect originating from influence warfare and propaganda campaigns during WW1. Information Operations and Influence Warfare is a concept used widely since the world wars where Americans and the British effectively used propaganda to influence attitudes around the world. Influence warfare has been used ever since both covertly and overtly to influence geo-political events and populations. A most recent example is Russia’s troll farm setup by the Internet Research Agency to influence US citizens during the 2016 Presidential election. Information Operations in the digital sphere has been well-formulated and established by the US government in military field manuals and standard operating procedures.

The making of a cyber superpower: Money, Manpower, Skill and Influence

DarkOwl has undertaken an estimation of the relative power of Nation-States in the darknet, along the axis defined above. Of the four variables used by our analysts to determine the extent of a Nation-State’s cyber power — Money, International Influence, Manpower and Skill — the US, Russia and China lead in all four categories. All three countries have significant capital at their disposal, as well as the academic infrastructure backing cyber related research and a formidable presence on the economic world stage.

Evaluating an additional 16 key Nation-States against these same four variables provides insight into their presence on the dark web and preferential use of cyber as a weapon. However, the release of cyber tools previously belonging exclusively to the NSA and the CIA have offered formerly less-powerful nations the ability to reframe themselves as power players and gain influence that was previously unattainable to them.

NOTE: a review of all the countries individually can be found at the end of this post in the Annex section.

A changing landscape: A look at the new tools that Nation-States are using on the dark web

Shadow Brokers & the release of Vault 7/8

In the summer of 2016, the mysterious hacking group Shadow Brokers began releasing multiple sets of “ops disks” (toolkits) used by the US National Security Agency that they had nefariously collected using persistent access since 2013. The unprecedented data gave insight into the inner workings of the most sophisticated hacking organization in the world, NSA’s Tailored Access Operations (TAO). The disks included UNITEDRAKE’s “fully extensible remote collection system” also mentioned in data released by Edward Snowden, infamous NSA whistleblower still in exile in Russia. Pronounced “United Rake,” this customizable malware supports espionage and mass surveillance with such abilities as capturing IP camera and microphone output, log keyboard input, access external drive data. This toolset also provides the unique capability to disguise the origin of the attack, effectively projecting attribution onto another country or hacking group.

Wikileaks followed shortly thereafter with releases of CIA’s infamous Vault 7 and 8, which included one of the largest collection of confidential documents to ever slip out of the CIA. The Vault 7 release discussed the Remote Device Branch’s project UMBRAGE group sophisticated false flag operations as well Weeping Angel, where IoT devices, such as smart televisions are exploited for use as spyware.

The most notable leak from the CIA Vault 8 was HIVE, a multi-platform CIA malware suite with its associated control software. The project provides hidden customizable “implants” for Windows, MikroTik (used in internet routers), Sun Solaris, and Linux platforms. HIVE also included a comprehensive Listening Post (LP) and Command and Control (C2) infrastructure to communicate with these implants that have been extensively studied and now in the arsenal of various international hacking groups of all skill levels ranging from amateur script kiddies to advanced cyber Nation-State Actors.

How the release of these tools are leveling and redefining the Nation State Actor playing field

The leaked source code for these NSA and CIA cyber tools are readily available and discussed in dark web communities. Dark Web enthusiasts on YouTube have posted downloadable videos walking their viewers through the specifics of these advanced exploits. While the US, China, and Russia continue to develop new even more sophisticated cyber weapons, other Nation-States with an emerging cyber capability can now – as a result of these leaks – have the resources and the knowledge to attack other nation’s network infrastructure and conceal the origin of the attack, further complicating the global nation station cyber environment.

The availability of such tools brings into question much of the cybersecurity’s reporting around Nation-State attack attribution. For example, in early October of this year, Microsoft reported that they had witnessed ‘significant’ activity throughout the summer against current and former US government officials, journalists covering global politics and prominent Iranians living outside of Iran. The group Microsoft is calling “Phosophorous” made more than 2700 attempts to identify consumer accounts that could prove potential entry attack vectors. The group, believed to be from Iran, indiscriminately attacked both personal and work email addresses and attacks also included attempts at infiltrating President Trump’s reelection campaign.

Recently, NSA revealed that Russian hackers from the infamous “Turla group” co-opted Iranian tools and conducted numerous attacks across industries in dozens of countries in recent months. Leveraging Iranian developed malware, Nautilus and Neuron, in combination with one of its own toolkits, called Snake, Turla obtained access to targets by scouring their networks for backdoors that had been inserted by Iranian hackers. Again, further confusion to attack attribution.

Detection of Nation-State Actors on the Dark Web

As one would suspect, Nation-State Actors are not immediately apparent on the dark web. When a Nation-State launches an operational attack on an entity, or steals critical information, it has little need or desire to put that data up for sale or otherwise dump it across anonymous networks. Likewise, governments will not announce intelligence collection or law enforcement gathering activities unless for the sole purpose of psychological diversion.

After spending the last five years archiving dark web anonymous services and interacting with the dark web community, DarkOwl analysts have identified a number of Nation-State Actors “fingerprints.” We see dark web these fingerprints as both indications and motivators associated with nation state actors use of anonymous networks.

Dark web Nation-State Actors have some key fingerprints that correlate to their motivating uses for the dark web.

a)    Nation-State Actors use the dark web to purchase and steal cyber exploits

Nation-State Actors obtain open source cyber exploits from underground markets in order to perform reverse engineering – often to successfully construct software to counter any attack where such exploit is used against a government or critical network. A key identifier of a Nation-State Actor posing as an exploit buyer is the availability of a significant budget and financial resources to acquire the goods on offer. Regular dark web users regularly discuss ‘tells’ for detecting law enforcement and/or intelligence agents on the network.

b)    Nation-State Actors obtain credentials on hostile governments and other entities of geo-political or military interest.

For example, the dark web is replete with US *.gov email addresses that could be exploited for brute force network intrusion or targeted phishing campaigns. As of the time of this publication, DarkOwl Vision detected over 550,000 dark web pages with credentials including a .gov email address.

Iran also has a significant government footprint of leaked credentials and network information, but it cannot be readily discerned whether this information was leaked by another Nation-State Actor or a team of vigilante hackers. For example, the hacker IranDokht is likely affiliated with a recent deep web paste by user slntar that included several dozen Government of Iran website admin panels for malicious targeting.

c)     Elaborate spear-phishing campaigns are not only utilized by criminals targeting corporate networks, but Nation-State Actors employ these as well for their political and militaristic agendas.

Recent reporting suggests that North Korea has successfully used phishing for obtaining access to numerous academic research organizations and critical US think tanks, using China’s model for technological advancement via digital espionage. During Operation STOLEN PENCIL, North Korea targeted Stanford University’s nuclear programs, proliferation, and polices group. Operation infrastructure overlapped with other campaigns conducted by North Korea. One of the IP addresses used in this campaign, (157.7.184.15) also hosted the domain bigwnet[.]com, which was used as the command-and-control infrastructure for the malware “BabyShark”.

Earlier this year, DarkOwl detected an Iran-based IP address (5.160.246.99) was associated with a list of UK-government domains, specifically Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) in a targeted phishing campaign.

d)    Nation-State Actors have used the dark web to conduct kinetic attacks against opponent’s Infrastructure.

In 2017, Iran conducted cyber attacks against safety systems at Saudi Arabia’s Aramco, one of the largest oil producer in the world. Hackers used the Triton malware to alter one of these facility’s safety controllers, which resulted in the controller shutting down an unspecified industrial process. In 2015, Russia successfully demonstrated shutting down Ukrainian power grids during political protests. Russia is also believed to be behind a number of attacks against Irish energy networks, possibly a testing ground for exploit development planned to use against more formidable opponents.

A recent release from the US CYBERCOM suggested that the US had successfully planted covert malware in Russia’s electrical power grid to kinetically interrupt Russia’s infrastructure in the event of a future attack, e.g. 2020 Presidential election in response to Russia accessing key nuclear safety systems in 2018.

In the summer of 2019, shortly before Black Hat 2019, Microsoft has reported in April that its Threat Intelligence Center discovered a targeted attack against IoT devices including: a voice-over-IP (VOIP) phone, a printer and a video decoder. The attack hit multiple locations, using the devices as soft access points into wider corporate networks. Two of the three devices still carried factory security settings, the software on the third hadn’t been updated. Microsoft attributed the attack to a Russian group it calls Strontium, an alternate name for the group, Fancy Bear. Cyber security researchers have identified this group as APT28. A week ago, the same state-sponsored hacking group was linked to the hacking of the secure email accounts of researchers investigating crimes alleged to have been committed by the Russian state. Fancy Bear / APT28, Fancy Bear also key to ioT hacking (according to Microsoft).

e)    Nation-States use the dark web to gain political influence by doxing political opponents.

According to the Mueller report, Guccifer 2.0’s successfully breached the DNC during the 2016 campaign and the information gained was carefully released to influence the US election. Numerous doxes of various key international figures on Tor’s DoxBin. doxbwurbe475dm5i[.]onion. Also, President Trump has been extensively doxed with numerous examples from dark web services Cebolla and DoxBin.

f)      Dark Web Propaganda.

The effective use of propaganda is a key feature of a successful information operations effort. Malicious information about a political or military opponent can be leaked at critical times to influence the outcome and public opinion. The dark web contains numerous examples where government data from nations has been leaked to hidden forums and paste sites for political gain and international influence.

Similarly, the Guardian reported that it was a Saudi-cybersecurity unit that had been ordered to ‘hack’ its computer networks due the Guardian’s critical reporting of the KSA’s overt murder of Washington Post journalist, Jamal Khashoggi.

g)     One of the most basic fingerprints of the Nation-State actors on the dark web is intelligence collection.

It a widely known “secret” that key HUMINT (human intelligence) collection is conducted by Israel’s Mossad and the US CIA in dark web forums, chatrooms and internet relay chats. Agents are regularly called out and teased for their overt presence in some popular dark web rooms.

Critical US defense technology has been released on the dark web and available for intelligence collection and reverse engineering by foreign adversaries. For example, last year, US military specifications for the MQ-9 Reaper Drone appeared on the dark web for sale and was widely proliferated. Sensitive information involving the MQ-9 Reaper drone and other military documents were stolen from a US Air Force captain’s computer.

Open source reporting reveled that Israel’s Whatsapp intelligence collection tool, Peagsus, had been deployed in 45 different countries for mobile phone collection and even sold to Saudi Arabia for monitoring potential dissidents in the country in a more covert means of intelligence collection. A recent hack of Russia’s contractor, SyTech discussed an effort to de-anonymize Tor, potentially revealing the true identifies of visitors to and hosts of hidden services on the dark network.

Editor’s note: We’d like to be clear that policing and legitimate law enforcement activity in the dark web has been intentionally compartmentalized from Nation-State Actors on the dark web in this report. We have not assumed they work independently of each other; law enforcement is a critical branch of government infrastructures and more integrally involved with smaller countries with limited resources. We have however specifically chosen not to discuss ‘fingerprints’ left by law enforcement on the dark web. Law enforcement have a well-known presence on the dark web hosting honey pot hidden services such as fake markets and forums, as well as posing as dark web drug vendors on popular crypto-markets to catch criminals purchasing illegal lethal drugs such as fentanyl. There are numerous open source examples where concerted international law enforcement efforts have been conducted to take down markets and pedophilia communities.

Nation-State Proxies and Cyber Terrorism

With this ever-changing threat landscape on the dark web Nation-States are turning to proxies and levering the terrorist segment of the dark web for launching attacks and avoiding attribution. Instead of utilizing a room full of cyber-soldiers in China targeting a room full of hackers at Fort Meade (NSA) on the dark web, some Nation-States choose to leverage private “contractors” to conduct information operations on their behalf.

Russia has the most extensive collection of cyber mercenaries and private contractors for their Nation-State agenda. In late October, open-source reports from the UK suggested the National Cyber Security Centre uncovered that the Turla Group, a cyber criminal group protected by the Russia government, had hijacked an alleged state-backed Iranian hacking group, known as OilRig or APT34, and subsequently carried out attacks on 35 countries. In July, the hacking team was actively targeting US political groups, using the code string ‘TrumpTower’ which coupled with the intelligence above could infer they could be linked to the alleged Iranian Phosophorous group.

Russia’s contractors are also active inside Tor as well. Earlier this year, hackers, hiding under the name ov1Ru$ breached a Russian intelligence contractor, SyTech revealing a number of secretive programs targeting Tor anonymity programs. Posing as a malicious exit node in the Tor anonymous network, the contractor’s program called Nautilus-S was specifically setup to deanonymize Tor traffic. The contractor, working closely with the Russian Air Force service and the FSB 71330, also had a another program in 2010 called Nautilus that harvested social media data from users of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others.

Perhaps Russia is attempting to model its behavior after the United States National Security Agency’s relationship with its commercial contractors. For example, Booz Allen Hamiliton (BAH) has an integral alliance with the intelligence community with hundreds if not thousands of intelligence and cybersecurity specialists working alongside the NSA. Significant intelligence leaks from the NSA in recent history were facilitated by contractors such as Edward Snowden and Reality Winner, both had sensitive compartmented information access and active on behalf of the US government during their tenures with BAH. NSA and other critical intelligence community organizations will continue to solicit the support of contractors outside of the agency in order to fulfil their over national threat intelligence objectives.

Terrorists as quasi-Nation-State Actors, and the changing use of technology in the dark web

Global terrorism, often fueled financially and politically by certain Nation-States, have an everchanging  and often reactive footprint on the dark web – reactive to the geopolitical events and policies, as well as changing technology. Many large scale extremist organizations such as ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Lebanese Hezbolla have declared themselves “Nation-States” in their own right, replete with military resources such as cyber armies and tactical hacking teams eager to fulfil their agendas. In the west, there is widely conflicting open source reporting as to the true activities of such quasi-Nation-States within the dark web.

A few years ago, ISIS was assessed to be extensively using anonymous networks to obscure the location and identities of its members and recruits. There were also a number of easily accessible hidden services advertising Daesh-affiliated content – ISIS’s Arabic language acronym – including recruitment and terrorist propaganda material. However, DarkOwl assesses with medium confidence that dark anonymous networks such as Tor will have limited future use in overt terrorist recruitment and propaganda dissemination, but instead terrorists are demonstrating a preference for encrypted mobile applications such as Whatsapp and Telegram for organizational coordination and communication.

Last year, the Wilson Center’s Professor Gabriel Weinmann published an extensive report, detailing the reasons why terrorists will continue using the dark web and associated encryption communication protocols and technology.

[Excerpt from the report below]

1. Terrorists use the dark web to hide: Extensive monitoring of the surface web by social media companies and security officials has resulted in a faster rate of removal of extremist content from social media platforms. Correlated with this is an increased use by terrorist networks of the dark web for communication, radicalization and planning attacks.

2. Terrorists use the dark web for recruitment: While initial contact can be made on surface web platforms, further instructions are often given on end-to-end encryption applications such as Telegram on how to access jihadist affiliated websites on the dark web.

Despite this, DarkOwl continues to observe some terrorist groups, such as Jaish-e-Mohammed use the dark web to actively recruit female fighters after seeing ISIS success using jihadi-brides as fighters in Iraq and Syria.

[Excerpt from the report continued below]

3. Terrorists use the dark web as a reservoir of propaganda: The removal of extremist and terrorist content from the surface web increases the risk that material of terrorist organizations may be lost. Much of this content later resurfaces on the dark web.

4. Terrorists use virtual crypto-currencies to evade detection and to fundraise: Terrorists, like criminals, use cryptocurrency because it provides the same form of anonymity in the financial setting as encryption does for communication systems.

According to a dark web news outlet, at the end of 2017, researchers witnessed a surge in ISIS fundraising, specifically donations-devoted sites encouraging Bitcoin donations, confirming that ISIS cyber terrorist have awareness of the risks of financial transactions monitoring. At this time, there is no indication in DarkOwl’s database that ISIS related terrorists are intentionally washing coins to evade investigative BlockChain analysis.

There are current very limited easily discoverable ISIS or formalize terrorist group hidden services on the dark web. DarkOwl has some cataloged content from when ISIS was more active on Tor anonymous network. An example is the “Cyber Kahilafah,” an effective hacking arm of the Islamic State, who in 2016 were extremely active on the dark web posting ISIS associated content such as videos and propaganda educational material. Some dark web forums suggested these were a state-run honeypot by Western governments. Note the crawl date of content listed in Darkowl Vision result below.

Due to extensive efforts by international alliances in the “war against terrorism” there are a few terrorist groups with the infrastructure and organizational strength to coordinate widely via anonymous networks.  In 2016, the international vigilante hacker group Anonymous conducted attacks against suspected members of ISIS across the dark web posting contact information for its members (email addresses social media accounts) and surface websites of its supporters, specifically Nasher Islamic State (@nashirislamicstateEN). Anonymous attacks against ISIS continued into 2019 with more Daesh/ISIS member’s social media and personal information shared across multiple deep web paste services.

Such independent targeting of terrorist on the dark web continues, with content posted as recently as late September 2019 detailing the possibly geolocation coordinates of suspected ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The dark web post closed with “ENJOY CIA” as if such information could then be used for operational targeting by the US intelligence community. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a US-led Special Forces operation exactly a month after the dark web posting. The coordinates pasted to the dark web do not correlate to Idlib, the location of the ISIS leader’s compound and  subsequent death by US security forces.

With on-going conflicts against terrorism in countries such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and the Gaza Strip, the number of “splintered” groups is growing, especially with recent calculated attacks Turkey conducted against Kurds along the Syrian-Turkey border. There exists various imagery on Tor including videos of beheadings and executions conducted in Yemen by ISIS soldiers.

Such conflicts have caused most ISIS affiliated terrorists to shift to encrypted communication protocols such as WhatsApp and Telegram. A deep web post from July, 2019 also hinted that ISIS recruitment was even occurring in private Discord channels; Discord is a proprietary VoIP communications platform favored by the video gaming community and deep web criminals.

After Facebook acquired the popular mobile app, WhatsApp, a concerted movement to the mobile Telegram application occurred. ISIS on Telegram is growing in popularity with regular videos, pictures, links, and propaganda content despite community perception that Telegram is strict on child pornography and terrorist content posts.

A Discussion Worth Continuing

Nation-State and Nation-State-sponsored threat cyber actors are resourceful, employing a mix of open source and dark web assets to complete their key information operations missions. Cyber combatants, state-sponsored proxies, and teams of mercenaries utilize the dark web to conduct intelligence collection and source development, government and corporate espionage, cyber exploit development and testing, disinformation operations for geopolitical influence, infrastructure disruption, and financial gain. While unique Nation-State ‘fingerprints’ are identifiable in some dark web use cases, the public release of cyber weapons previously belonging exclusively to the NSA and the CIA have offered formerly less-powerful nations the ability to reframe themselves as power players, gain influence that was previously unattainable to them, and obfuscate the origin of their cyber attack, further befuddling attribution for cybersecurity researchers.

Global terrorism, frequently fueled financially and politically by specific Nation-States, have an unpredictable and often reactive footprint on the dark web – reactive to the geopolitical events and policies, as well as changing technology. Terrorists’ adaptability has them shifting away from the dark web to end-to-end encrypted proprietary protocols such as Whatsapp and Telegram where they can recruit, strategize, and disseminate propaganda anonymously.

As Nation-State Actors, cyber-proxies and terrorist organizations continue to evolve in the use of the dark web and anonymizing technologies, the cybersecurity community must be vigilant to continue the conversation on intelligent identification and adaptive tracking of their everchanging tactics, techniques, and communication preferences.

Annex

DarkOwl has compiled the following analysis to help contextualize the power ranking of select nation’s cyber capabilities.

UNITED STATES

The US is plentiful in manpower, skill, finances, and international influence. The total number of cyber-soldiers employed by the US is well into the tens possibly hundreds of thousands with the recent decoupling of US Cyber Command (CYBERCOM) from the NSA and standing up its affiliated Department of Defense (DoD) branches, such as Army Cyber (ARCYBER) and Navy’s FCC (Fleet Cyber Command). The US also leads in technical skill development and international influence spearheading numerous global cyber initiatives both in the dark and surface webs. This week, the public learned that the US has solicited assistance from Montenegro, deploying an elite cyber team to collaborate and coordinate with in order to predict Russia’s imminent influence on the US’s 2020 presidential election.

CHINA

China extensively uses the deep web for espionage and intelligence collection activities. While China blocks the use of Tor to its citizens, the government regularly employs the technology’s anonymity for its sophisticated PLA Unit 61398 to target US military defense technology and intellectual property. China is also clever enough to identify the key military defense industrial contractors for targeted network attacks to collect designs, documents, and administrative details of critical export-controlled technology.  This summer, China-based hackers were discovered steering a large-scale cellular espionage campaign targeting 10 different mobile carriers around the world. The access realized could be leveraged to launch a future large-scale attack against cellular phone and data infrastructure. The elaborate campaign could have been orchestrated in retaliation for the on-going global 5G arms races and the US’s crackdown on China’s telecommunications provider, Huawei, restricting its 5G development activities in the West.

Since 2015, state-sponsored cyber PLA unit 78020 has also been involved in large-scale military, political, and economic cyber espionage in the resource-rich South China Sea area. The elaborate espionage campaign involves an intricate domain network of resources including IP addresses situated in the Denver, Colorado area according to an in-depth intelligence report published by Threat Connect, Inc.

RUSSIA

As apparent from numerous media and FBI inditements in recent years, Russia’s government and intelligence services have deeply penetrated the dark web conducting numerous large scale Nation-State campaigns against targets all over the world. Attacks regularly include the US and its western allies in what could be perceived as an all out cyber war, demonstrating a wide array of advanced technical cyber capabilities. Researchers at the Department of Defense Cyber Strategy struggle to quantify the exact number of cyber specialists available for Russian cyber campaigns, but there are reports of a number of elite dedicated operational hacking units, including 26165 and its sister unit 74455 affiliated with the hack against the Democratic National Convention and the GRU’s elaborate hacking campaign to influence the US election. Russia is also infamous for its use of cyber proxies, hiring advanced non-government affiliated cyber criminal organizations to conduct APT attacks on their behalf.

ISRAEL

Israel is a highly secretive and influential Nation-State Actor. Unit 8200, Israel’s elite cyber spy organization is comparable to NSA with a more focused and calculated operational agenda. Unit 8200 is augmented by a number of other highly technological units with the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). Conflicting source reporting eludes to a potential dedicated Israeli Cyber Command, but those capabilities may have been distributed amongst the IDF’s various telecommunications divisions at present. Former Unit 8200 personnel have also been hired by Israeli cyber corporations to implement Israel-sponsored covert activities in dark web operations that require more legal freedom and less international scrutiny.

GERMANY

Germany, the UK, and France all have sophisticated cyber capabilities. Germany has recently established its own Cyber and Information Space Command (CIR) with over 13,000 personnel assigned to ward off network intrusion attacks and disinformation campaigns. Germany law enforcement also leads in state-level dark web footprint actively participating in taking down several prominent cryptomarkets and drug vendors in recent years. (Source)

UNITED KINGDOM

Recent reporting that hackers from the United Kingdom infiltrated Russia’s Turla Group highlights the sophistication of the UK’s capabilities. GHCQ has doubled its capabilities from 2014, delivering full-spectrum capabilities from tactical to high end counter-state offensive cyber operations. https://www.cbronline.com/news/uk-cyber-warfare-gchq. With the UK’s NHS  as a principle victim to WannaCry in 2017, the UK is positioned to not only defend itself from future attacks but counter-attack when needed.

UKRAINE

Ukraine was originally not considered a prominent Nation-State Actor worth including in our analysis. In the past, Ukraine’s cyber capabilities centered around organized crime and the dark web carding community. Given the most recent media reports featuring Ukrainian government and businessmen of interest and their influence in US election politics, Ukraine’s “influence” on the international stage is notable. This “influence,” coupled with Ukraine’s persistent war with Russia over the annexation of Crimea, including defending against Russian cyber attack against Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure, places Ukraine in the top 10 Nation-State Actors in the cyber domain.  Consideration for Ukraine at the last minute also demonstrates how rapidly and drastically conditions can change in this environment.

FRANCE

In early 2019, France published its new French Military Cyber Strategy consisting of two separate documents: the Ministerial Policy for Defensive Cyber Warfare (hereafter the Ministerial Policy) and the Public Elements for the Military Cyber Warfare Doctrine (hereafter the Public Elements). France has significant influence in the EU and NATO organizations making up for what it lacks in human capital for the cause. (Source)

IRAN

Iran leads in Middle Eastern countries (other than Israel) as a major Nation-State cyber actor. Iran’s Cyber Army has been a formidable threat for over a decade targeting a variety of western defense and commercial networks. After the United States successfully infiltrated and shutdown their nuclear centrifuge system via the Stuxnet virus, Iran invested heavily into developing the skills and resources to hold their own on the international cyber stage. They also operate heavily in a ‘proxy’ configuration, where they collaborate with other smaller Nation-States to share technology and resources. It is assessed that any Nation-State-level cyber attack from Iran could be conducted with the aid of countries such as North Korea, Syria, and Yemen.

Iran has also been known to collude with terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and private hacking groups. By training private hackers and rogue terrorists, possibly without clear direction and operational boundaries, Iran could be key in orchestrating the next global cyber-war.

NORTH KOREA

North Korea has claimed responsibility for a number of large-scale attacks against international baking infrastructure in response to international economic sanctions levied against them for their resistance in ceasing their nuclear programs. According to open source intelligence reporting, North Korean hackers have successfully deployed a new ATM malware, called ATMDTrack that records and steals banking data from cards inserted in vulnerable ATMs in India. ATMDTrack is assessed to be a component of a much larger DTrack malware family that involves not only command and control remote access trojan (RAT) software, but keylogging, retrieving browser history, gathering host IP addresses, information about available networks and active connections, listing all running processes, and listing all files on all available disk volumes of the victim machine.

INDIA

In 2018, India established the National Technical Research Organisation as the main agency for protecting national critical infrastructure and to handle all the cybersecurity incidents in critical sectors of the country. Aside from cyber attacks from Pakistan, India faces attacks from other key malicious Nation-State Actors, as mentioned above with North Korea’s attacks of India’s banking infrastructure. Recent conflicts in Kashmir increase need for a defensive posture from vigilante hackers supporting the Kashmiri people.

CANADA

In 2018, Canada passed comprehensive legislature to empower Canada’s Communications Security Establishment (CSE) for effective offensive cyber operations. The sweeping Bill C-59 positions the CSE (the Canadian NSA) to take a more “active cyber” posture as opposed to its previous defensive and reactive position. The legislation calls for the CSE to “carry out activities on or through the global information infrastructure to degrade, disrupt, influence, respond to or interfere with the capabilities, intentions or activities of a foreign individual, state, organization or terrorist group as they relate to international affairs, defense or security.” Canada will not stand alone in the world stage in cyber, but have the resources and parliamentary backing to influence, protect and defend Canadian infrastructure from Nation-State attacks.

UPDATES:

(8/7/19 1:45pm MST): We’ve now learned that Homeland Security has sent a letter to 8chan owner Jim Watkins demanding he come before Congress and answer questions on the site’s extremist content. Read more.

(8/7/19 11:30am MST): One of 8chan’s admins published a tweet denying that 8chan is behind the creation of their ZeroNet bunker.

If @CodeMonkeyZ is being truthful, then someone else is responsible for preparing the 8chan ZeroNet bunker on their behalf. We will continue to investigate and update here as we find out more information.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:

For a long time now, 8chan has known that their days as part of the mainstream internet (or “surface web”) were numbered. In this case, it took an unstable individual publishing a “manifesto” on their site to force an action to migrate to the dark web. The manifesto in question advocated for violence, eugenics, and mass-murder on one of their boards. While the 8chan platform is known for its forums seeped in hate, racism, sexism, offensive humor, and just general derision, this appeared to be the tipping point. There was bound to be something posted by one of their users that crossed a line, which is how 8chan found themselves setting up a potentially permanent camp on the dark web.

For those unfamiliar with the website, 8chan is an online forum that is essentially a mixture of 4chan and Reddit, and is known for its hands-off policy when it comes to moderating user content. This laissez-faire approach is at the heart of the platform. The website itself came about when a frustrated user of 4chan, Fredrick Brennan (known as Hotwheels), felt that 4chan moderators were overstepping rights to free speech by removing content.

Knowing this, it makes some sense that people with perhaps unpopular or fringe viewpoints would find a safe haven in 8chan. And, to their benefit, the administrators behind the divisive platform have arguably done their due diligence in ensuring its survival.

“Welcome to the semi-official 8chan emergency bunker”

Traditionally, 8chan has operated on the surface web (8chan.net), while also maintaining a mirror .onion site on the popular darknet, Tor. However, DarkOwl Vision has records of a third 8chan hub that has existed since at least early April. This version of 8chan – nearly identical to its counterparts – is hosted on ZeroNet, a slightly lesser known dark web that is similar to Tor.

While many recent reports in the press are indicating that 8chan scrambled for a new place to land, this is only somewhat true. ZeroNet is a lesser known darknet, yes, but painting 8chan moderators as shocked or unprepared for this type of event would be inaccurate. It appears they anticipated something of this nature happening for several months.

Self-described as an “emergency-bunker,” the 8chan “zite” was all-but inactive until this past weekend. Records from DarkOwl Vision indicate little to no user activity when it was first collected into Vision’s dataset. Meaning, this zite was put in place truly to serve as a back-up hub for 8chan. The administrators foresaw an end to the site on the mainstream internet.

The takeaway here is that 8chan administrators anticipated losing network stability and set up a version of their chan board on ZeroNet, a peer-to-peer decentralized anonymous network that very few people are – or were – familiar with. In the last 48 hours alone, the volume of users or “seeds” on the ZeroNet 8chan zite has skyrocketed with thousands of posts.

The popular boards, “Politically Incorrect (/pol/) and Noob dig (/QResearch/) include several posts about the recent El Paso shooter’s manifesto and activities. Further discussions cover attempts to censor “free speech” and the fact that taking down 8chan’s service will have little to no impact on gun violence in the US.

One user pointed out the manifesto was posted to the popular social media app Instagram prior to 8chan, spreading the conspiracy that this was all an effort to justify shutting down 8chan’s boards.

Some anonymous users have expressed concern over the security of ZeroNet, and the potential that this new platform could be a government honeypot collecting user’s IP addresses and VPN services-a similar tactic used by law enforcement in previous hidden service takedowns on Tor.

How 8chan scrambled to stay online and found its new home on the dark web

While the details of how 8chan lost its footing on the surface web and Tor are still emerging, we do know a few things for sure. 8chan used CloudFlare’s services to protect it from DDOS attack, until over this past weekend Cloudflare chose to terminate its security services for 8chan servers, calling it a “cesspool of hate.”

On Sunday, 8chan creator Frederick Brennan, who no longer runs the forum, called for 8chan to be shut down. 

What comes next is less clear. It is confirmed that after losing CloudFlare, 8chan then shifted to BitMitigate security protection services, who also provide DDOS protection to White Supremacist news outlet The Daily Stormer. Reports have widely indicated that BitMitigate also dumped 8chan of its own volition, though it is unclear if that is accurate. It appears that instead of deciding to drop the controversial forum, BitMitigate may have been blacklisted by its service providers and “de-platformed” for hosting 8chan. Evidence of this is supported by reports that at sometime this weekend, all sites hosted on BitMitigate were offline.

Shortly after discontinuation of its security services, 8chan suffered outages from its 8chan.net surface website and of its Tor hidden service site due to large scale DDOS attacks targeting the servers.

As of Tuesday afternoon, 8chan’s Tor hidden services had been restored and was back online.

Is the 8chan culture the culture of the dark web?

Decentralized internets or “darknets” (or “dark webs”) have long been infamously characterized as hubs for the darker side of society. Some of the most popular examples of this are the abundance of dark web market places selling drugs, hitmen for hire, child pornography, human trafficking operations, etc. However, defenders of the merits of dark webs often market the right to free speech and unregulated communication as a vital function of society, with the dark web being a tool to achieve these ends.

That being said, it would be remiss to not acknowledge that “free-speech” forums seemingly come with a heavy load of potentially dangerous baggage. 8chan is not the only type of discussion board where hate speech and political ideology is proliferated. 4chan, Oniichan, and 2chan contain similar types of posts, and many dark web chat rooms and underground internet relay chats also support the congregation of radical nationalistic personas.

We will continue to monitor the dark web as the situation develops. For more information on the darknet and ZeroNet, contact us today.

As Dream Market staff mentioned prior to their shutdown, a new market was on the horizon. On Friday, former official Dream moderator, waterchain, announced the opening of Saṃsāra, based on the source code of the infamous Dream Market. Saṃsāra is a term from eastern religious philosophy. Ironically it refers to the eternal cycle of birth, suffering, death, and rebirth.

The official market announcement is received with skepticism. Many questioning its legitimacy and a number of inconsistencies with the story behind the return of the market.

The new Saṃsāra market layout is strikingly similar to Dream, yet includes several new security elements. Admins refer to a new “anti-phishing feature” as the first of its kind that purports to completely defeat man-in-the middle attacks along with the option for a user to login with their PGP key or two factor authentication(2FA) for additional security. Once in the market, the source code is identical to the original Dream Market with the addition of a News and Community section that allows for interaction with Admins on market features. There is no mention of a traditional separate market forum like Dream supported.

Even with a new market theme, logos, and user interface on top of Dream Market source code, within hours of the announcement, many users uncovered bugs across the cryptomarket, including issues with saving public PGP keys, which forced users to employ 2FA for additional profile security.

The new market administrator dismissed community concerns over the lack of presence by SpeedSteppers. Further, dismissing questions about why the new onion address as advertised for weeks on Dream Market is not listed as a valid mirror for Saṃsāra. He instead attempted to encourage people to “forget the past” and “move on” insisting numerous times that he was a former official Dream moderator, as if to validate everything he said on the forum as legitimate.

• Others quickly noticed that waterchain’s new PGP key was created in June with only 2096 bits instead of the more secure 4096 bit key of the former legitimate waterchain. The moderator claims they lost his key in a corrupted Tails configuration. It does appear suspicious that they would choose to rebuild his key with less security, considering he is now essentially running a market instead of moderating it.

• The market does not support Monero transactions, which is possibly a more secure and less traceable cryptocurrency than Bitcoin. There is a discussion along with member vote on the integrating XMR available through July 18th in the new Community section of the market.

• All of the market mirrors use Tor’s legacy V2 hidden service domains instead of V3. Dream Market issued several v3 mirrors earlier this year when suffering from heavy DDoS attacks.

Even with these concerns, vendors are taking advantage of the limited offer of 0.025 BTC vendor bonds and over 400 market listings, consisting of mostly drugs, were online and ready for purchase within the market’s first day.

On a technical note, a few more inconsistencies appear. First, when requesting /server-status/ on the Saṃsāra url, we find what looks like a status page for another darkweb forum, Torum. Second, the HTTP-Headers also appear to leak IP addresses pointing at both a host in The Netherlands and the United States.

In recent days, user waterchain has been banned on Dread forum for rule violations.

Only time will tell how long this market will be reliably online before the DDoS attacks against Saṃsāra begin.  Remember to check back here for updates as more information emerges.

Keeping current and making sense of recent news surrounding Darknet Marketplaces is a challenge for even the most active and engaged Tor enthusiasts. In this blog, DarkOwl analysts dive into the latest dark web market exit scams, the recent, widespread law enforcement operations and their impact, and how cryptomarkets will continue to be a significant segment of darknet hidden services available to underground and would-be criminals.

Below is a timeline of the primary events leading up to, and resulting from the recent turbulence surrounding many darknet marketplaces.

April, 2019

Dream Market Announces Closure & Never Returns

In late March 2019, Dream Market, one of the oldest cryptomarkets announced that it would be ceasing its current operations on 30 April 2019. The announcement was made by the developer and admin, known as Speedsteppers. The statement also mentioned an eventual re-branding as a new Tor hidden service and address. For over a year, Dream Market had suffered from extraordinary DDoS attacks resulting in over 600+ mirror links circulating around the dark web for the marketplace.

In early April, Europol confirmed a significant multi-national darknet drug operation resulting in 61 arrests and the confiscation of 50 dark web accounts used for illegal activity. Along with the agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and Canadian Police, Europol law enforcement officers executed 65 search warrants, seized almost 300 kg of drugs, 51 firearms, and over €6.2 million Euros ($6.95 million USD) of cryptocurrency, cash, and gold. Given Dream Market’s prominence in the dark web community, it is a reasonable assumption that some, if not many, of these arrests were vendors active on Dream. Although there is no mention of Dream Market in the Europol report, it’s well known the market place has been a target for law enforcement for some time.  Further, the aforementioned new Dream Market onion addresses have had no activity. 

Immediately after the announcement, rumors circulated across popular dark web forums about the Dream Market closure being led by law enforcement or an inside exit scam. In April, many users had issues withdrawing money from their Dream Market wallets. Some moderators scammed vendors via support ticket notification, informing the vendor that funds withdrawal can be restored only after the vendor supplies their password and last used bitcoin address.

DarkOwl covered the details of Dream’s less than graceful shutdown in “Insider Report: Darknet reacts to Dream Market announcement.”

While it’s unknown whether or not law enforcement infiltrated Dream Market’s servers directly, two independent cyber security researchers circulated detailed analysis revealing some very specific details regarding Dream Market’s admin, SpeedSteppers, de-anonymizing him as Mark DeCarlo based on the domain registrations for several surface websites, one specifically shared in 2018 with Dream users contained a link to a clearnet forum called deepwebnetwork.com. [Source1, Source2]

On a hidden service popular with “doxxers”, an anonymous hacker briefly posted an IP address for Dream Market. When accessed directly using the leaked IP address, the Dream Market login screen is available along with familiar Tor network addresses listed on the left sidebar of the page.

Figure 1 Direct Access to Dream Market via Leaked IP Address

Given the report on SpeedStepper was published in January, the weird behavior of moderators trying to scam vendors, along with an inactive URL for “Dream’s Partner” it would not be surprising if law enforcement infiltrated Dream Market months ago and operated it similar to the shutdowns of Alphabay and Hansa as led by the Dutch National Police in the summer of 2017.

Figure 2 Source: Dread Forum on Tor (/post/52f54402d99bd51d4b74)

Wall Street Market Exit Scams Then BKA Announces Seizure

As one would expect, Wall Street Market (WSM) surged in popularity almost immediately after Dream’s announced shutdown. Most every social platform recommended vendors and potential buyers move to WSM and/or Empire to conduct their online market business.

Figure 3 Dread users discuss WSM as the Dream alternative for trading.

In late April, peaking at an estimated 5,400 vendors, 1.15 million customers, and well over $10 million in cryptocurrency, WSM admins conducted a classic darknet “exit scam.” The estimated market value is totaled somewhere between $11 and $15 million USD. The three admins diverted these funds into their own crypto accounts while claiming the market was in “maintenance mode.” All the while unaware that law enforcement was secretly monitoring their accounts.

In the midst of the exit scam, one of the site’s moderators, Med3l1n, clearly angry over the exit scam, began blackmailing WSM vendors and buyers, asking for 0.05 bitcoin (at the time ~$286 USD). They threatened to disclose to law enforcement the identities of WSM vendors and buyers which made the mistake of sharing various personal details in support tickets in an unencrypted form.

It is unclear if these extortion attempts succeeded, but days later, Med3l1n also published an IP address for a server located in the Netherlands and login credentials for the WSM backend on a popular darknet forum knownas Dread. Further, they invited nefarious actors to take down the market.

The IP address is in the same network range of another IP address that leaked from the Wall Street Market backend two years ago. Although the authorities discovered the address of the server in other ways, according to public affidavits.

Within days, Med3l1n, identified as Marcos Paulo De Oliveira-Annibale, 29, of Sao Paulo, Brazil, was arrested by German authorities along with the three market administrators, all from Germany:  

• Tibo LOUSEE (coder420), 23-year-old from Kleve, Germany;

• Jonathan KALLA (kronos), 31-year-old from Wurzburg, Germany;

• Klaus-Martin FROST (theone), 29-year-old from Stuttgart, Germany.

All three face charges in both Germany and the United States after a series of missteps in their operational security led authorities to their IP and physical addresses. The market seizure and arrests were a culmination of a two-year investigation involving agents from the DEA, the FBI, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Dutch National Police (Politie), Europol, and Eurojust.

During the investigation, authorities discovered the admins also operated darknet marketplace, German Plaza Market (“GPM”), which launched sometime in early 2015 and shut down due to an “exit scam” in approximately May 2016. Agents successfully correlated wallet addresses for GPM with those of WSM in the investigation connecting the administrators.

Law enforcement obtained one of the administrator’s home IP address, correlated to and registered in the name of the suspect’s mother, through a cooperating VPN provider he used. The IP address was used to access certain administrator-only components of the WSM server infrastructure. KALLA later admitted that he was the administrator for WSM known as “Kronos.”

As a point of technical interest, the complaint filed with the US District Court in California included a footnote that the US Postal Service was responsible for the blockchain transaction analysis for FROST, and “de-mixed” the flow of transactions to ascertain that the monies from two different wallets ultimately paid FROST’s account [Source]. Researchers from Korea University published a paper in May 2018 outlined a de-mixing algorithm that could identify the relationships between the input and output addresses of the popular dark web mixing service called Helix with a 99.14% accuracy rate [Source].

Another administrator accessed the market IP address to connect to the WSM infrastructure using a device called a UMTS-stick7. This device is a USB-powered modem for remotely connecting to the internet. This UMTS-stick was registered to a suspected fictitious name, and the BKA executed multiple surveillance measures to electronically locate the specific UMTS-stick. The UMTS-stick was active at a residence of LOUSEE in Kleve, Northrhine-Westphalia (Germany), and at a local information technology company, where LOUSEE was employed as a computer programmer. LOUSEE was in possession of the UMTS-stick of interest upon arrest.

The PGP public key for “TheOne” is the same as the PGP public key for another moniker on Hansa Market, “dudebuy”. Interpol and Dutch police shutdown Hansa darknet market in July 2017, as part of Operation Bayonet. A financial transaction connected to another crypto-wallet used by FROST was linked to “dudebuy”. Investigators identified a wallet used by FROST that subsequently received Bitcoin from a wallet used by WSM for paying commissions to administrators. Records obtained from the Bitcoin Payment Processing Company revealed buyer information (connected to Hansa Market, seized in 2017) for a Bitcoin transaction as “Martin Frost,” using the email address [email protected]. A second link connecting FROST to the administration of WSM is based on additional Bitcoin tracing analysis.

May, 2019

Finnish Customs Seizes Valhalla (Silkkitie)

During the same week reports of WSM’s collapse surfaced, Europol released an official statement that Finnish customs (Tulli) in close cooperation with the French National Police (La Police Nationale Française)seized Valhalla, also known as, Silkkitie sometime earlier in the year. The report did not mention many specifics, other than Finnish federal authorities have the entire Valhalla server and its contents, along with a significant drug confiscation. DarkOwl Vision indicates the marketplace went offline sometime in early March.

The May 3rd Europol report stated:

“After the Silkkitie (Valhalla) site was shut down by the authorities, some of the Finnish narcotics traders moved their activities to other illegal trade sites in the Tor network, such as Wall Street Market”

..suggesting the potential for international law enforcement’s concerted attempts to funnel users to a targeted market for takedown.

Valhalla marketplace was one of the oldest markets on the dark web, listing over 30,000 products by some statistics. Its activity started in October 2013 as a Finnish-only site called Silkkkitie.

FBI Targets Deep Dot Web

On the 6th of May, two DeepDotWeb (DDW) administrators were arrested facing charges of kickbacks by earning millions in commission by referring users to specific darknet marketplaces. The seizure of DeepDotWeb alarmed the dark web community as it did not host any illicit content directly, but instead provided paying users with indexed and catalogued access to dark net market hidden service URLs – complete with ratings and reviews. DDW admins received money for registrations using the referral addresses hyperlinked. Authorities claim that DDW administrators made millions of dollars using this criminally innovative ‘picks and shovels’ approach to illegal online trading. Coincidently, while DDW was being shutdown, popular dark web community forum, Dread experienced heavy DDoS attacks and was unable to support logins for over a week, causing many to suspect it too had been compromised. DarkOwl analysts speculate that Dread’s DDoS was intentional to prevent vendors and buyers to coordinate on interrupted sales and illegal trading.

Figure 4 Source: https://www.europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/deepdotweb-shut-down-administrators-suspected-of-receiving-millions-of-kickbacks-illegal-dark-web-proceeds

CGMC Disappears Overnight

On or about May 10th, 2019 Cannabis Growers & Merchants Co-op(CGMC), silently disappeared without notice. At first, users claimed the market had completed an exit scam as they had lost the ability to withdraw funds, contact support, and initiate the process for a refund. It was later determined that the admins, Marko and Rory, felt pressure from the WSM and DDW seizures that it was time to gracefully leave the business. On the night of the self-shutdown, admins cancelled all pending orders and returned funds to the customer, released all escrow and cash to the vendors. Days after the shutdown, a signed PGP message from Rory asked for the community’s positive vibes for their services and customers joked about seeing them stroll on the beaches of Seychelles.

Users across other darknet communities scrambled to find their favorite vendors as this was all about the same time Dread was under DDoS and inaccessible for coordination. Many darknet vendors reposted their PGP signatures and offered to continue to serve customers without the markets, trading directly with their previous customers via encrypted communications.

One CGMC vendor shared:

The sellers are in the same situation, but I can confirm:
1. All the escrow was released and cashed (the money went to my wallet)
2. Pending orders the money was returned to the customer
3. All orders from Monday to Thursday are sent
I do not think it’s an exit scam, I think it’s a problem with the website and they’re working on fixing it.
If the market were to close Marko would have warned. Let’s wait a few days to see what happens.
If the situation is not fixed open store in another market. Please, if any of my clients reads this message, verify that the PGP is authentic.

June 2019

Libertas Moved to I2P Then Shutdown due to Inactivity

In late May, Libertas, a Monero-only marketplace, moved its hidden service marketplace from the Tor network to the peer-to-peer-based I2P network, citing “flaws in the Tor network” as justification. They also referenced an unconfirmed Tor vulnerability that international authorities have used to reveal hidden service’s real-world IP address. Libertas provided detailed instructions for its users to successfully setup I2P within Tor Browser to access this faster and hopefully more secure version of its marketplace.

Libertas has historically been one of the most unique cryptomarkets in the dark web, being one of the first ever to only accept Monero instead of Bitcoin like other marketplaces. In their market announcement over a year ago, Libertas admins suggested that Monero was the “only real way to make anonymous transactions online” including the many ways they ensured the security of the servers supporting Libertas darknet market.

Figure 5 Libertas Original Welcome Message on their Market Forum

On June 19th, less than a month of operating on I2P, Libertas admins announced they were shutting down until further notice, due to the lack of use of I2P. They reaffirmed their belief that all Tor network-based hidden services which are allowed to operate are law enforcement sting operations.  

Other Tor users have discussed migrating to I2P and encouraged other marketplaces to do so in forums and discussion boards, suggesting that Tor is neither safe nor robust enough from DDoS attacks to host large-scale crime-focused services. Unfortunately, the complexity of setting up I2P has discouraged its broad-based use on scales comparable to the Tor network.

Today: What Market Places Are Still Operational?

Empire Market

Despite its legacy and familiar user interface dedicated to the late Alex Cazes from AlphaBay, Empire recently has been under heavy DDoS causing it to surge in mirror link generation to mitigate. DarkOwl has knowledge of 135 unique V2 and V3 addresses for the cryptomarket, but believes that over 30% of those could be phishing addresses. In recent weeks, Empire forums have been bombarded by hundreds of complaints that account wallets have been consistently scammed, even after verifying links as legit. RapTOR directory services alleges that Empire has indeed exit scammed and any working links will lead to currency loss.  The dark web community is contentious over the lack of support from staff and instability of the market.

Empire’s head moderator se7en claims most of the complaints are from customers using “phishing” market links instead of verified ones, but the tune is all too familiar to the behavior of other markets. Empire recently added two-factor authentication (2FA) as an additional security protocol, but a former Empire-mod posted a detailed paste on how easy the 2FA is bypassed, stating “the end user is always the weakest link to a system,” in a recent report by DarkNetLive.

Tochka / Point

With recent market confiscations, Tochka (Point) could now be considered one of the oldest operational darknet cryptomarkets as it started in early 2015 emphasizing a “community-like” culture with classified advertisements and low vendor registration requirements.

Unfortunately, in early June, many users reported that the marketplace was a complete scam with numerous orders, wallets, and accounts deleted in recent weeks. Comments on a forum suggested that the Tochka had suffered a server crash in early June resulting in the loss of several transactional records and to contact the moderators active on Dread for assistance. Unfortunately, this week, Dread has also been under heavy DDoS and users are unable to submit complaints or receive technical support.

Other dark web markets worth mentioning

• Genesis – Javascript required market with increasing popularity due to recent news coverage. Online and active.

• Dark Market – Appeared in May 2019 with admins Sassy & Dark. Now accepts Monero and primarily trades in digital goods (over 1000 listings).

• Luna – Marketplace that required wallet registration for non-vendors and offered Monero and “locktime” to secure transactions. Offline as of early June.

• Core – Offline in mid-June after heavy DDoS attack.

• Cryptonia – Typical dark web cryptomarket experiencing heavy DDoS in recent weeks. Admins pride themselves on their market manifesto that states their movement will never be corrupted by greed. Online and active.

• Berlusconi – Recently added Multi-Sig wallets and states that they will no longer offer weapons & explosives by the end of June.

• Nightmare – Experiences regular periods of heavy DDoS. Recently redesigned and returned with new UI and “dark mode.” One of the largest active markets with 65,000+ users, 3,000+ vendors and more than 50,000 listings.

• Rapture – Rumored to have been built on the source code leaked from Trade Route. Many users thought Rapture exit scammed in late 2018, but returned recently stating they were under heavy DDoS. Offline as of time of writing.

• Agartha – Similar design to the Agora Reloaded Market that exit scammed. Online and active with no complaints.

• Apollon – Typical dark web cryptomarket operating since 2018. Possibly connected to former RAMP shop. Surge of users (over 40,000) due to Dream announcement.

• Enterprise – Brand New as of June 2019. Operational but very few listings.

• Deep Mart – Appeared in early 2019. Believed to be a scam market based on reviews.

• The Majestic Garden – In May, TMG moved to only V3 Tor URLs and registration is closed due to surge of registrations after Dream announcement. Online and serving customers.

• Nirvana Market – Brand new market as of June 2019.

• Canazon – Features primarily drug vendors. Operational since 2018. Online and active.

• Silk Road 3.1 – Operational and now accepts Monero. Online and active.

• UnderMarket 2.0 – Market featuring counterfeiting and fraud items. Javascript required for some portions of the market. Online and operational.

• The French Connection – One of the oldest operating markets (over 5 years). Does not ship to the US. Online and active.

• Yellow Brick Road – Invite-only market by vendors. Online and operational.

Since 2019, DarkOwl Vision has knowledge of and successfully crawled over 3,000 dark web cryptomarket addresses — over 1800 of them in the month of June due to heavy DDoS mitigation. Libertas administrators expressed legitimate concerns about Tor’s vulnerabilities to DDoS and host IP address exposure, apparent by the crippling DDoS attacks on many of the markets and critical community forums like Dread market.

While many of the historically active markets have voluntarily closed their doors, it is evident by the introduction of multiple markets in recent months, along with the surge of customer and vendor registrations well exceeding thousands of users, that the criminal darknet market community will not be deterred by international law enforcement operations and will resort to direct encrypted communications with their suppliers if necessary.

Update (7/2/2019)

After allegedly negotiating with would-be DDoS attackers, it would appear that Dread market is back online…for now. Check back here for continued updates as our analysts uncover more information. 

The market segment of the dark web is the most volatile and dynamic of all types of hidden services available. The status of any of the markets mentioned in this report can change without any notice. This report only covered the status of English-speaking marketplaces and a follow-up report covering non-English cryptomarkets, such as Russia’s MEGA, will be published in the near future. Please continue to check back for updates.

Dream Market — one of the largest and most active remaining darknet marketplaces — has announced that it is officially shuttering its doors in its current location. The notification, which can be found on every page in the marketplace, indicates it will be transferring its services to a new URL and partner company at the end of April.

This news announcement comes just weeks after Dream Market has been weathering heavy DDoS attacks, leaving many of its domains unserviceable for intermittent periods.

Notification on Dream Market about migrating services to a new URL at the end of April 2019.

Dream Market has been around since 2013, making it one of the darknet’s longest lasting marketplaces and a leading go-to in the community for illicit sales. The news about the migration has been a topic of many discussions on the darknet, including on Dread, a darknet forum dedicated to security and harm reduction for darknet marketplace purchases.

User “waterchain”, a moderator for Dread’s Dream Market sub forum and alleged member of Dream Market’s team, posted a statement regarding the migration. The statement claims that it was prompted by DDoS attacks “on the Tor browser side” and an alleged extortion attempt.  

“Official” statement by an alleged Dream Market team member on the darknet forum Dread. (Image via DarkOwl Vision)

Vendors and buyers alike feel displaced after this announcement as they try to figure out their exit plans. Earlier this week, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) published a press release about shutting down 50 darknet accounts that were used for illicit activities under operation SaboTor (Sabotage Tor).

This, and the timing of Dream Market’s closure, has led some darknet market consumers to believe that Dream Market has been compromised by law enforcement.

Dread user expressing concern regarding the timing of Dream Market’s closure and Operation SaboTor. (Image via DarkOwl Vision)

Some members are hopeful that Dream Market is simply experiencing technical difficulties and still plan to use their new market once it’s back online, while other vendors have already transitioned to other markets.

Dream Market vendor UPactive advertises listings on two other popular markets. (Image via DarkOwl Vision)

Some newer, less active markets have tried to capitalize on this opportunity by offering incentives for vendors to transition to their marketplace. One such market is Cryptonia Market, which has offered incentives for former Dream Market vendors to switchover to their marketplace.

A post from Cryptonia Market, offering fee waivers and other incentives to verified Dream Market vendors. (Image via DarkOwl Vision)

While moderators of Dread’s Dream Market sub forum have tried to assure the public that the market was not compromised, there hasn’t been an announcement signed with Dream Market’s official PGP key. This, and the fact that the official Dream Market forum is offline, leaves some users skeptical.

Update:

On the forum DNM Avengers, user rockemsockem45 pointed out that the date format used in the shutdown message is different than previous messages by admin and staff, further adding to the suspicion that the market has been compromised.

DNM Avengers user rockemsockem45 posts about the inconsistency of the date format used in the shutdown message.

Also, starting earlier this week, multiple vendors have claimed that Dream Market’s support staff are attempting to scam vendors. According to Dread user Terrysukstock, the scam starts by disabling the vendor’s ability to withdraw funds from their account. The vendor is notified via support ticket that fund withdrawal will be restored after the vendor verifies their identity by supplying their password and most recently used bitcoin address.

If the vendor supplies the password, Dream’s support staff changes the password and removes their PGP key, making the vendor’s account inaccessible. Terrysukstock, a vendor with over 34,000 reviews and an average rating of 4.8/5 on Dream Market, claims he followed these instructions and lost over 5 bitcoin.

Vendor Terrysukstock posts about falling victim to Dream Market’s support staff scam. (Image via DarkOwl Vision)

Several vendors have supported Terrysukstock’s experience. Vendor GreentreeCA’s posted his support ticket to Dread to provide evidence of the scam.

The support ticket that Vendor GreentreeCA received, providing evidence of the scam.

Meanwhile, Dread’s Dream Market subforum moderator Waterchain has announced retirement due to “corrupted” moderators that have allegedly locked him out of his account.

Retirement message by former Dream Market moderator Waterchain. (Image via DarkOwl Vision)

No official message has been forthcoming from Dream Market’s team regarding the scam allegations.

Note: This story is developing. DarkOwl will continue to monitor developments and post updates here, so remember to check back!

Curious about something you’ve read on our blog? Want to learn more? Please reach out. We’re more than happy to have a conversation.

In our previous Russian darknet focused blog post, we discussed some of the tools and techniques the Russians were discussing and using in offensive cyber operations against US and international organizations. Russian criminals are also notorious for selling malicious software, e.g. digital goods, on darknet marketplaces that could be used in an attack against government and corporate networks and infrastructure, e-mail lists for phishing, along with a myriad of illegal drugs and counterfeit.  

A Historical Look Back

RAMP Landing Page (image sourced from Google images search)

Russia’s presence on the Tor network is most well-known for the historical darknet forum & marketplace, RAMP — Russian Anonymous Marketplace — which was reportedly seized last July after a surprising effort by the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs-which historically has turned a blind eye to online crimes.

Coincidentally, the RAMP marketplace, active since September 2012, shut down around the same time as international authorities conducted Operation Bayonet, shutting down key centralized Tor marketplaces Alphabay and Hansa, amid concerns about possible law-enforcement’s use of denial of service attacks to expose the real IP address of the marketplace.

What Happened to the RAMP Community?

Similar to the after effects of shutting down AlphaBay and Hansa, the RAMP marketplace closure caused little disturbance to the Russian segment of darknet cryptomarkets. RAMP vendors successfully shifted to other key marketplaces while a hidden service called Consortium attempted to create an “ex-RAMP Verified Vendor Community” specifically for reconnecting with known verified RAMP vendors. DarkOwl Vision has successfully archived over 9,000 results from Consortium’s hidden service domains. Consortium was formed in late 2017 shortly after the RAMP marketplace closure, and active through May 2018. The Consortium hidden service featured 15,000 users, including more than 100 verified RAMP dealers who confirmed their identity with a PGP key. This archive provides an excellent investigative referential database for prominent darknet vendors and their aliases.

Hydra

When RAMP disappeared, legendary Russian marketplace, Hydra witnessed an increase in user registrations and vendor activity while and near clone of RAMP, called MEGA surfaced only earlier this year.

Hydra has been an active darknet marketplace catering to the Russian Tor community since the Silk Road days. It resurfaced with a new Tor URL in the summer of 2016, less two years after law enforcement claimed it had arrested and charged the 26 year old market admin and Hungarian resident in November 2014 as part of Operation Onymous. Hydra is a centralized marketplace featuring many individual vendor-shops similar to RAMP with offerings including drugs, digital goods, and even mobile phone SIM cards.

Hydra prefers serious Russian drug vendors, only allowing sellers who are willing to pay “rent” for their shops and requiring a monthly payment of over $100 USD for use of the service. This reduces the likelihood of vendors who are actually scammers or law enforcement utilizing the site for entrapment and exploitation.

Offers of Mobile SIM and Debit Cards on Hydra (http://hydra23qk4ar6ycs[.]onion)

MEGA

MEGA has a wide range of illicit drug offerings in their market catalog including items ranging from marijuana to opiates with delivery across the Eastern Slavic language countries of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Similar to other anonymous centralized markets, MEGA also supports vendors selling digital goods such as databases, carding and counterfeit related products, and ready to use hacking software. MEGA features a hidden service layout very similar to RAMP, with over 200 links to unique vendor shops from the landing page and many of the same drug vendors that once traded on RAMP also advertise on MEGA.

For example, one drug vendor on MEGA who uses the moniker, Aeroflot openly states in their MEGA vendor profile that they were also active on RAMP. Cross referencing the nickname against DarkOwl Vision revealed that Aeroflot also has their own personal vendor Tor hidden service where they offer popular drugs such as amphetamines, hashish, and psychedelic mushrooms directly without the marketplace interface. The Aeroflot vendor shop was first indexed by DarkOwl Vision in January 2018.

Surprisingly, there is little information on the surface web about Russia’s MEGA marketplace, as most open source darknet cryptomarket reporting features Hydra instead.  Despite this, MEGA also has a Clearnet proxy of their site via the website URL http://www.mega2web.com.

Both MEGA and Hydra hidden services emphasize trusted vendor-buyer relationships before the market will facilitate the crypto-transaction and goods exchange. For example, on Hydra, before an order from the buyer is processed, the vendor and buyer must communicate and trust each other. The market even offers a “transaction chat” platform to communicate securely about the order. The classical process for browsing, selecting, and ordering a product on the platform are used to communicate to the vendor that you intend to buy from them, referred to on Hydra as a “reservation.” The vendor’s confirmation and order approval are required before payment for the item is disbursed and shipping commences. This approach theoretically reduces the likelihood of scamming and law enforcement operations.

Hydra’s formidable return after such a large-scale joint-international law enforcement effort seizure and vendors trading on the RAMP clone-MEGA reinforces theories that shutting down darknet markets only yield a mild, temporary deterrent effect on the affected darknet community and does not have near the impact the media conveys. This supports arguments from social scientists, Décary-Hétu and Giommoni in October 2016 after analytical review of the effectiveness of police crackdowns on cryptomarkets where they stated:

Police crackdowns, as is the case for traditional drug markets, are not effective measures to lower the volume of sales on online illicit drug markets. Cryptomarket participants have been shown to have a minimal reaction, or one that is temporary, to overtly large shows of force and to have the ability to adapt through displacement techniques.

Darknet Forums that Include Marketplace Features

There are a number of Russian-specific forums and bulletin boards across the Darknet.  DarknetMarkets.co advertises Russia’s Wayaway forum as one of the oldest darknet marketplace, available since 2009, while the Tor hidden service title translates to “First Drug Forum.” Unlike centralized markets, Wayaway presents contents in a bulletin board layout with a range of topics, mostly drug-trafficking in nature, such as Shipping in Russia, Trade with CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) Countries, Jobs, and Laboratory, where questions regarding home-based personal drug manufacturing are answered.  Hydra is listed as a Wayaway Partner on the forum’s footer along with Hydra logos, market links, and various digital advertising scattered across the forum. Wayaway serves also a gateway to Russian darknet drug vendors with a large section of the forum dedicated to connecting site visitors with individual drug vendors (i.e. “Trusted Stores in Russia”) including customer feedback and a question and answer section on transacting and shipping related concerns.

Wayaway topics have thousands of views and hundreds of comments indicating the forum serves as a high-volume resource for the Russian Tor community. Many of the most active users on Wayaway also trade in other drug and illegal goods forums on Tor.

RuTor

Another popular Russian forum and marketplace on Tor is RuTor. RuTor has been an active Tor hidden service since 2015 and has quickly established itself as a reliable information resource for Russian hacking, darknet education, and project collaboration. RuTor’s landing page has several distracting advertisements at the top of the site similar to the previously popular RAMP marketplace.

Utilizing a bulletin board format similar to Wayaway, RuTor has established sections for Vendor Shop Fronts, Security, and News. The cryptomarket portion of RuTor is tightly controlled by the site administrator who must be contacted before submitting a deposit in a user’s market wallet.  Most centralized marketplaces have an automated system for all market crypto-wallet deposits and withdrawals. RuTor has extensive threads covering cybersecurity related news, corporate data breaches, and technical tips and techniques for network infiltration and tracking.

Runion

“Protecting the interests and rights of your paranoia” is another key Russian darknet forum, Runion, or the Russian Onion Union. Runion does not have the marketplace focus, but instead covers a wide range of darknet criminal specific topics such as Operational Security, Cryptocurrencies, Weapons, Finance and Law, Breaking and entering, Psychology, Hacking as well as Substances and Health. Example threads include in-depth technical conversations around potential Telegram hacking techniques, Dismantling and Shooting an RPG-22, and modifying smartphones for increased telecommunications security.

Administered by one who goes by Zed, Runion lists over 69,000 members, almost 20,000 topics, and over 300,000 messages posted on their forum since 2012. The nickname Zed is active across other hidden services, specifically moderating other well-known Tor carding forums.

Intelligent Hidden Services

The Russian darknet marketplaces and forums featured in this article have had a persistent Tor presence for several years and many include intelligent bot-detection code to prevent automation collection of their content. Captchas, formally known as Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, are often present on many of the hidden services to detect if the website user is human or not. DarkOwl Vision’s authenticated crawl routine specifically targets services containing high value intelligence with such authentication protocols. In order to successfully view the content of a hidden service that includes such bot-detection methods with Professional Tools, search the domain along with the search pod, “GROUPS->AUTHENTICATED SITES” to reduce result noise.

On January 9, the KickAss Forum went offline. On Twitter, user @bitsdigit initially reported that the site was seized by law enforcement, but then said the seizure was not a legitimate notice (remarking that “something is very fishy”) and warned others to stay clear. Though the URL in the initial @bitsdigit reporting correlates to an older KickAss hidden service URL, DarkOwl confirmed the two most recent onion v3 KickAss URLs are indeed down, but do not display the Seized Hidden Service Banner.

On January 7, KickAss moderators started the thread, “KICKASS TOR VERSION 3 URLS”, announcing deactivation of the old v2 hidden service addresses and new v3 URLs would be circulating “for security reasons” – perhaps due to recent publicity relating to forum member TheDarkOverlord. Shortly after, the login page for KickAss changed to PRIVATE, with instructions for members to message a Jabber address using Off-The-Record (OTR) for continued access.

Screenshots from DarkOwl Vision from January 2019, listing new KickAss URLs.

Screenshot from DarkOwl Vision from January 2019, with Jabber contact.

However, according to historical records of the forum in DarkOwl Vision, the [email protected] Jabber account from a few days ago does not match Jabber accounts KickAss moderators have ever mentioned. Additionally, an announcement thread from November 2018, captured by DarkOwl Vision, stated that KickAss staff only uses OMEMO for end-to-end encryption, as OTR is not “save” [sic] anymore.

Screenshot from DarkOwl Vision from November 2018, mentioning that Kickass staff only use OMEMO, not OTR.

Given the abrupt private state of the forum days before it disappeared and use of OTR instead of OMEMO, it seems likely Law Enforcement has seized the KickAss forum, and the Jabber account with OTR was a phishing attempt to garner information about its active members. In the past, Law Enforcement have taken over hidden services and impersonated its moderators in attempt to get information about the sites’ members. Dutch police studied the logs of the real admins of Hansa for weeks and even operated the illegal marketplace, throwing the darknet community into chaos in 2017.

One thing that is consistent on the darknet is that hidden services come and go. On Thursday, members of Torum, another popular Tor-based cybersecurity forum, discuss the disappearance of KickAss and the importance of making the most of what’s online while it’s online.

Screenshot of Torum discussion about the KickAss forum disappearance.

DarkOwl will continue to follow this story and report updates as they are available.

This Week, 6,500 Hidden Services were Ousted from the Darknet

The name Daniel Winzen may not mean much to the ordinary internet user, but on the darknet @daniel is the legendary nickname for the individual  known for offering free anonymous web hosting, chat, e-mail, and XMPP/Jabber services on Tor for the last 5 years and perhaps longer. He started out humbly – installing a small number of Tor-based hidden services, or websites, on a Raspberry PI 2 – but over the years expanded his presence to hosting upwards of 7,000 hidden services per month for darknet users across Tor and I2P. That is, until last week.

Shortly after 10:00pm UTC on the 15th of November 2018, Daniel Winzen’s server was breached, databases accessed, and accounts deleted, including the root, or administrator account, rendering his services unusable. In less than three hours, the intruders deleted SQL databases for his chat, onion-link list, and hit counter. Hackers initially accessed the main phpMyAdmin and adminer panels using the correct hosting management password, inferring the password may have been harvested via phishing attempt or the server was accessed by someone with access to Daniel’s credentials. Daniel’s popular GitHub account also experienced a failed login for his popular software repository on November 9th, which has not been determined as related as of yet.

Daniel’s updates on his portal indicates that this hack was a “database only” breach.

According to updates posted to his surface net and darknet portal, Winzen is thoroughly investigating all potential vulnerabilities in his server before restoring services. He has also listed concern over a 0-day exploit, released exactly one day before the attack, in the imap_open() function of PHP that he has since patched.

30% of Online Domains Disappeared Overnight

Over 30% of the operational and active hidden services across Tor and I2P disappeared with the hack of Daniel’s Hosting Services and over 6-Million documents archived in DarkOwl Vision are no longer available on the darknet.

DarkOwl quantified the impact to the size of the darknet, specifically Tor, using its internal “Map the Dark” reporting, which includes statistics from darknet websites indexed over the previous 24-hour period. Our data substantiates the hosting provider’s offline status, with a delta of 4,887 domains going offline between the 15th and 16th of November. DarkOwl has indexed the archives of 5,300 domains from early November and has assessed them to be services that were formerly hosted on Daniel’s server.

Daniel’s previous online-link list advertised that he hosted over 1,500 private hidden services whose domain URLs are unknown at this time. DarkOwl’s estimated total number of domains hosted by Daniel are consistent with the 6,500 offline domains quoted by Daniel on his server portal.

• 657 of the hidden services have only title “Site Hosted by Daniel’s Hosting Service” and contain no meaningful content worth mentioning. Darknet hidden service domain could have been used for something other than serving web content.  

• Over 4,900 of the hacked domains are in English and 54 are Russian-language hidden services. Two of the oldest hidden services are interestingly in the Portuguese language.

• 457 of the hidden services contain content related to hacking and/or malware development, while 136 include drug-specific keywords.

• 304 of the hidden services have been classified as forums and 148 of them are chatrooms.

• 109 of the hidden services contain counterfeit related content while 54 specifically mention carding-specific information.

• Over 20 of the hidden services contain content including weapons & explosive related keywords.

Daniel’s hosting service, chatroom and online-link list have served as a pillar for the darknet community for years. For example, his online-link list is referenced by nearly 500 other hidden services, making it the second most commonly referred to directory listing (behind Fresh Onions) and providing a foundational starting point for new users navigating Tor.

Given that his services were provided free of charge and generally reliable against attack, there are mixed theories as to who could have wanted to destroy this mainstay of the anonymous online community.

Are Russian Hackers Responsible?

In recent weeks, Russian hackers on a website called www.antichat.com, outlined the technical details of exploiting PHP’s imap_open() function to extract password hashes for privileged accounts, as an alternative to brute force mining. Then, on Thursday (the same day as the attack), antichat.com forum staff member “Big Bear” posted a MEGA.nz link including a PDF, titled, “[RCE] 0-day в imap/c-client на примере PHP” (in English: [RCE] 0-day in imap / c-client using the example of PHP) detailing the imap_open exploit. The same post identifies the authors by the nicknames crlf and Twost, the latter of whom is also known as “Aleksandr.”

The Anti Child-Exploitation Community

Daniel’s darknet notoriety increased in 2016 when he ported Lucky Eddy’s perl-CGI LE-Chat script into PHP with mySQL or PostgreSQL backend, optimizing the environment for Tor and decreasing the darknet community’s reliance on Javascript, thus allowing for image sharing inside a chat platform (which is not available via XMPP and IRC) without potentially compromising posters’ identities. As a result, Daniel’s LE-Chat code became a popular platform for the darknet pedophilia community, and the home for many well-known Child Pornography sharing chatrooms such as Tabooless, Camp Fire, and Child Priori.

Individual “pedo-hunters” and anti-pedophilia groups have called for hacking Daniel’s services using large-scale distributed denial of service (DDoS) campaigns, specifically because it was rumored that the principal administrator and some key staff members were active in pedophilia-specific chats.

A Potential Law Enforcement Operation

Daniel’s Chat quietly resurfaced this past Saturday with a clean install and backup from early 2017, accompanied by a flurry of confusion over the assignments of administrator, moderators, and members. Without the comforting presence of the  “regular” member database and credentials, users had no way to verify that anyone was who they said they were. Many legitimately feared that popular nicknames of members and staff had been spoofed by trolls trying to capture access to the members-only chat. One user on the darknet social media site Galaxy3 stated that @daniel re-installed the chat and that it “sounded like him,” although with a caveat that everyone should be cautious.

At the same time, others theorized the extreme possibility that @daniel had actually been arrested and the take-down was led by international law enforcement or the German police. Daniel’s hidden services experienced extreme DDoS in the weeks preceding the hack, similar to other law enforcement-led darknet seizure operations.

Anti-Syntax Club or an Inside Job

For over a year, the nickname Syntax has been referenced with either extreme love or extreme hate. Hundreds of trolls have posted across forums and paste sites about how this purportedly 17-year-old female teenager is responsible for taking down a number of pedophilia chatrooms and community leaders in recent years. Since early this fall, there has been an increase in the number of anti-Syntax trolls repeatedly calling for attacks against Daniel’s services, more specifically Syntax and her ally ChatTor, since she was promoted to Super Moderator of Daniel’s popular and drama-filled chatroom during the summer and accused of abusing the position.

Other members have suggested the remote possibility the attack on Daniel’s was led by Syntax and ChatTor so that they could take administrative control of the chatroom, although a recent image capture from ChatTor states that it was simply about being at the right place at the right time.