We found the reports comprehensive and data-driven, which helped us make informed decisions. The detailed insights and actionable data have consistently provided us with a competitive edge in a rapidly changing alcohol market. The report has also provided a comprehensive analysis of all the major regional markets, which include North China, East China, South Central China, Southwest China, Northwest China, and Northeast China. The report has provided a detailed breakup and analysis of the market based on the age group. A detailed breakup and analysis of the market based on the category have also been provided in the report. The second, known as QQ, is a hacking forum designed as a combination of different social media platforms and providing communication tools such as QQ groups, QQ forums and private chatrooms.
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It offers counterfeit documents, financial fraud tools, hacking and malware services. Launched in 2023, STYX focuses on financial crime, providing stolen credit card data, hacked bank accounts and access to various cryptocurrency laundering tools. Given the explosive growth of these markets, organizations must prioritize proactive threat monitoring. Axis Intelligence provides dark web surveillance solutions that help businesses identify leaked credentials, fraud attempts, and malware risks before they escalate.

International
- We also expect the majority of lower-level Chinese threat actors to continue to conduct cyberattacks against China’s domestic industries including healthcare, financial, government, and education entities for financial gain.
- It is a hub for financial cybercrime and offers a wide range of illicit services and stolen data that cater to sophisticated cybercriminals.
- Without a law dedicated to protecting personal information, and the lack of clear guidelines, China’s enforcement agencies have struggled to keep up with an increasingly skilled industrial chain of insiders and data brokers.
- Several Darkweb practices involving technologies are more advanced than those on the surface web, especially regarding privacy-protecting practices while retaining certain aspects of professional surface web services.
- A “dark factory” (also known as a “lights-out factory”) is a manufacturing facility where machines handle every aspect of production without human intervention.
- As a result of today’s action, all property and interests in property of the blocked person described above that are in the United States or in the possession or control of U.S. persons are blocked and must be reported to OFAC.
Research funding in Darkweb research will likely interest various countries and organizations due to the potential impacts on issues such as cybercrime, national security, and internet governance. The top three funders identified in the data are the National Science Foundation from the United States, the European Commission from Belgium, and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science from Japan. University of New South Wales in Australia, Concordia University in Canada, and Arizona State University in the United States have high research productivity and Influence. Tracking funders helps researchers understand the global distribution of research funding. For example, researchers may be interested in knowing which countries provide the most funding for research in their field or how funding patterns have changed over time 52. This information can be useful for identifying opportunities for collaboration or for comparing the research funding landscape in different countries.

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They built DUTA by sampling the Tor network and manually labeling each address into 26 classes. Using DUTA, they compared two text representation techniques and three supervised classifiers to categorize Tor hidden services. These results are preliminary, and more enhanced datasets will offer better detection services to law enforcement authorities.

Further Reports
In 2019, there were approximately 8,400 active sites on the dark web, selling thousands of products and services daily. These sites cater to cybercriminals seeking valuable data, such as credit card numbers, login credentials, and personal information. Since 2020, 2easy has sold massive stealer logs with sensitive data like passwords, bank cards, and initial access credentials. Launched in 2020, Cypher Marketplace sells fraudulent documents, stolen credit cards, fake IDs, and malware. Its emphasis on user anonymity and document forgery makes it a core tool for identity fraud. We have no control over these insider leaks, but it’s concerning enough for us to take care of our online data.
1 Future Research Directions
Elliptic has amassed a comprehensive dataset of crypto wallets used by fentanyl dealers to facilitate this deadly trade. Our blockchain analytics engine Nexus can be used to trace the on-chain activities of these dealers – including money laundering or dark web activity. This is likely not a new trend, and numerous vendors possibly also deal with other drug substances alongside fentanyl. Vendor clusters with Bitcoin payments to fentanyl suppliers have also been identified interacting with dark web marketplaces that have since gone offline, such as Silk Road and Hydra. Some are looking for illegal stuff they can’t buy elsewhere, like drugs or counterfeit documents. Launched after the takedown of AlphaBay in 2021, Abacus Market has rapidly risen to prominence.
China Dark Store Market Report Coverage:
It’s worth noting that Scopus stands out as the foremost citation and abstract database and serves as the most widely employed search 30,37,38. Science mapping (co-citation, co-authorship, keyword co-occurrence, and bibliographic coupling) and performance analysis (analysis of the number of publications, citations, and their impact) are carried out in this work using bibliometric analysis 35,39. In this study, author and index keywords were retrieved and thematically grouped into groups 43 to investigate the evolution of topics published about Darkweb. A quadrant chart has been used to understand the research productivity and Influence 44. SciVal was used to understand collaborative partnerships and analyze research trends 45. VOSviewer 46 is used for bibliometric mapping, and keyword clustering 47 has been done as part of the study.
Market Segmentation Analysis
We did not find any direct mentions of DDoS attacks against Taiwan on the Chinese-language underground. However DDoS tools, tutorials, and services are often advertised on Chinese-language cybercriminal marketplaces. Anyone interested can easily acquire the tools and knowledge to pull off a small-scale attack. Excessive monitoring, collecting, and storing of sensitive information belonging to individuals is not illegal under Chinese law.
China and its citizens have emerged as a major fixer in the global flow of dark money by moving to fill a market gap left by a crackdown on other methods of cleaning cash. Even Mexican and Colombian drug cartels, who previously kept such activities “in house”, are now using Chinese launderers to service their empires, US lawmakers heard last month. The influence of China over the money laundering industry looms so large that some experts believe Chinese-controlled entities and individuals are now responsible for as much as half of the industry. “Not surprisingly, patients continue to explore any means necessary, often outside their country or continent, to achieve access to kidney transplantation which has led to a growth in ‘transplant tourism,'” the report reads. They did not reply to Newsweek’s question on whether national laws have been broken in the black market.

- As China works toward its 2060 carbon neutrality goal, the energy efficiency of dark factories represents an important contribution to reducing industrial emissions while maintaining manufacturing output.
- Cryptomarkets are online marketplaces on the Darkweb that are used to sell illicit drugs.
- The law will be applicable both within and outside Chinese territory, and overseas organizations or individuals who conduct telecom network fraud activities will be held accountable in accordance with the relevant provisions of this law.
- But when one door closes, another tends to open, and in this case, that other door is China’s black market for smuggled chips.
Networking infrastructure is another key application area, with dark fiber being used to create scalable and secure networks for businesses and government entities. This segment is expected to grow as organizations continue to upgrade their IT infrastructure. For example, the Chinese government has been investing in dark fiber networks to support smart city initiatives and improve connectivity in urban areas. Additionally, major tech companies like Alibaba and Tencent have been leasing dark fiber to build their own private networks, enhancing their ability to deliver cloud services and support data-intensive applications. Another research direction being pursued is embedding, named entity recognition, and entailment, all concepts related to natural language processing (NLP), the field of artificial intelligence that deals with the interaction between computers and human (natural) language.

While authorship identification using Artificial intelligence techniques has been explored in the literature, this has yet to be attempted for Darkweb. These objectives have been addressed by building authorship verification and identification datasets and exposing the challenges of using NLP techniques 8. With the protective armor of privacy, the accessible conversations fall short in aiding author identification due to the multi-lingual, mixed-style, and covert communication characteristics within the Darkweb. On March 20, 2024, U.S., German, and Lithuanian law enforcement agencies seized Nemesis’ servers in a joint operation. Since the takedown of Nemesis, Parsarad has discussed setting up a new darknet marketplace to take the place of Nemesis with vendors that were once active on the marketplace.
Xinai Electronics had amassed millions of face prints and license plates through its network of cameras all over China, and claimed its data was “securely stored” on its servers. The company’s inventory boasted a wide spectrum of chemicals, including those earmarked for the production of designer drugs and synthetic cannabinoids, as well as chemicals used for the production of methamphetamine and fentanyl. With over 16,000 transactions at the time we did the research, MicroDroper stood apart from the other sellers.