|
 U.S. authorities said on Thursday they had shut down Silk Road 2.0,
the successor website to Silk Road, an underground online drugs
marketplace, and charged its alleged operator, Blake Benthall, with
conspiracy to commit drug trafficking, computer hacking, money
laundering and other crimes.
Europol, in a statement, said U.S. and European cyber crime units,
in a sweep across 18 countries, had netted $1 million worth of
Bitcoin, the digital currency, 180,000 euros in cash, silver, gold
and narcotics.
Troels Oerting, the head of Europol's cybercrime center, said the
operation had knocked out a significant part of the infrastructure
for illegal online drugs and weapons trade in the countries involved
but black market websites have mushroomed and are created easily.
Raids were carried out in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Finland, France,
Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg,
Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and
the United States, in an operation code-named "Onymous". Sixteen
people operating illegal sites were arrested, Europol said, without
specifying the charges.
Around 400 Internet sites and domains, which had been used to sell
child pornography, guns and murder-for-hire, were taken down on
Thursday, it said.
"They had set up complete business models, just like any web shop.
They display what they sell; drugs, weapons, stolen credit cards.
People paid and they delivered by the mailman," Oerting said. "There
was even a ranking system for reliable suppliers."
[to top of second column] |
The illegal organizations used the so-called tor computer network,
which allows users to communicate anonymously by masking their IP
address, to run so-called "dark" markets.
"We have also hit services on the Darknet using Tor where, for a
long time, criminals have considered themselves beyond reach. We can
now show that they are neither invisible nor untouchable."
The operation involved Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, the FBI
and U.S. immigration and Homeland Security officials.
Tor, short for the onion router, is also used by activists in
countries where the web is censored.
(Reporting By Anthony Deutsch; Editing by Susan Fenton)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
