No honor among thieves: Why the dark web is having a trust crisis
Suspicion plagues one of the darkest corners of the web after authorities crack down
“I don’t trust society to protect us,” said Michael Corleone in The Godfather. Now it looks like criminals on the dark web don’t even trust the underground marketplaces they’ve been relying on to trade stolen credit card accounts.
None of these occurrences have done much to nurture confidence among anonymous cybercriminals.
"Since 2015, one of the biggest changes in cybercriminal underground marketplaces is the erosion of trust,” said Tony Lee, head of consulting in Hong Kong and Macau at Trend Micro.
“There is no honor among thieves in these marketplaces, and this has impacted how they buy, sell and communicate."
Researchers say that in the aftermath of crackdowns, they’ve yet to see dark web users converging on any single dominant marketplace like before. Users commonly write on forums dreading about the possibility of yet another exit scam or law enforcement takedown. Of the remaining functioning sites, many are facing DDoS attacks, where hackers cripple a site by flooding its server with excessive internet traffic. Some users even suspect that law enforcement is behind them.