DarkMarket was an English-speaking internet

cybercrime A cybercrime is a crime that involves a computer or a computer network.Moore, R. (2005) "Cyber crime: Investigating High-Technology Computer Crime," Cleveland, Mississippi: Anderson Publishing. The computer may have been used in committing the ...

forum created by Renukanth Subramaniam in London that was shut down in 2008 after

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...

agent J. Keith Mularski infiltrated it using the alias Master Splyntr, leading to more than 60 arrests worldwide. Subramaniam, who used the alias JiLsi, admitted conspiracy to defraud and was sentenced to nearly five years in prison in February 2010. DarkMarket also refers to a new

darknet market A darknet market is a commercial website on the dark web that operates via darknets such as Tor or I2P. They function primarily as black markets, selling or brokering transactions involving drugs, cyber-arms, weapons, counterfeit currency, stole ...

founded in 2019 under the same name. However, German prosecutors in the cities of Koblenz and Oldenburg said 12 January 2021 that they had shut down what was "probably the largest illegal marketplace on the

Darknet A dark net or darknet is an overlay network within the Internet that can only be accessed with specific software, configurations, or authorization, and often uses a unique customized communication protocol. Two typical darknet types are social ne ...

" called DarkMarket and physically arrested the man believed to operate it near Germany's border with Denmark. The website allowed buyers and sellers of stolen identities and credit card data to meet and conduct criminal enterprise in an entrepreneurial,

peer-reviewed Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...

environment. It had 2,500 users at its peak. According to supervisory special agent Mularski of the FBI's Cyber Initiative & Resource Fusion Unit, their undercover operation was "very successful in getting to the upper echelons of the Dark Market group and we were actually able to run the server and host all the communications that were going on there to make our cases." He obtained full access to everyone using the site and what they were doing by securing the server after gaining Subramaniam's confidence. In Congressional testimony on November 17, 2009, FBI Deputy Assistant Director, Cyber Division Steven R. Chabinsky described the FBI operation: In a speech to the GovSec/FOSE Conference on March 23, 2010, Chabinsky related explained Another DarkMarket member, Thomas James Frederick Smith, pleaded guilty on June 10, 2010, to conspiracy to intentionally cause damage to a protected computer and to commit

computer fraud Computer fraud is a cybercrime and the act of using a computer to take or alter electronic data, or to gain unlawful use of a computer or system. In the United States, computer fraud is specifically proscribed by the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, ...

.Another Pleads Guilty in Botnet Hacking
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Further reading