How Would You Go About Discovering A Dark Web Market Admin/Owners Identity?

OK, this is by no means something that I want to try and do :-) I'm writing a story about a low-level dark web user / moderator who discovers the real life identity of the founder of a multi-million dollar illegal drug marketplace. I know there would be no one way to go about doing this, but I'm pretty clueless as to steps the character would attempt to illicit this information. If they had the owners email, spoke with them via chat, had some access to the back-end of the marketplace, but not all of it - are there any code / information they may look out for to help them discover who this person was?

Any thoughts to help me make this as believable as possible would be great!!!

Thanks


Comments


[20 Points] robertnesta_m:

Why don't you check how people got caught (silk road, alpha bay, oxymonster, ...) and try something along those lines?


[5 Points] diOpAnonMu:

Usually they should only be reachable by onion address except when Tor or the firewall is restarting, if they could do a massive webscan during the user's tor update, they could query all the pages for the banner of a webservice. There may only be a short time, so something like masscan from multiple well connected hosts while chatting with the admin about what a pain Tor updates are, so you can predict the reset time.

Another fun plan would be to run a malicious Tor exit and figure out when admin is connected to it, then replace some download with a backdoored version via HTTP downgrade.


[3 Points] allismokeisls:

Boy you fed as fuck🐷🐷🐷


[3 Points] HotPlateD:

So which market is yours?


[3 Points] yardbird420:

Sounds more like an episode of Mr. robot. Craig Robinson is the Dread pirate Roberts.


[2 Points] ill_infatuation:

Have you tried asking him first?


[2 Points] DNrick_sanchez:

Hmmm nice try Fed lol


[2 Points] FantasticBlueGirl:

As a fellow writer, I highly recommend doing some research on the takedown of large DNMs like Alphabay and Silk Road. Wired wrote a great series called "The Untold Story of Silk Road", which is fucking fascinating and has parts that read like a crime novel. I highly recommend reading it, and then following that up with your own research (some good tech sites to start with: Wired, Tech Insider, Gizmodo/io9, the Verge). Here are the links I mentioned, with some extras: - Wired: Untold Story of Silk Road, Pt. 1 (https://www.wired.com/2015/04/silk-road-1/), Pt. 2 (https://www.wired.com/2015/05/silk-road-2/) - Wired: How the Feds Took Down Silk Road (https://www.wired.com/2013/11/silk-road/) - Tech Insider: FBI Took Down AlphaBay (http://www.businessinsider.com/alphabay-online-black-market-taken-down-silk-road-2017-7)

Hope this helps. Good luck with your story!


[2 Points] loveisrealnfa:

By placing a virus in their tor update.

/u/ForLol_Serious


[1 Points] L3T:


[1 Points] EtizPassion:

Ask


[1 Points] CookyDough:

This is one way it could conceivably happen. /r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/77945d/the_dark_webs_most_notorious_thief_phishkingz/


[1 Points] Throawa5xcv:

I suggest you learn concepts of social engineering and reverse engineering. Your goal is to start with a finish product and go backwards. This could could take form in a username, schedule, interests, motivation. Especially focus on items which don't seem to have significance. Expect to spend a bunch of time going down tunnels which lead no where.


[0 Points] welcomeback_:

Here is the true story how the United States authorities arrested one of the biggest guys on Darknet.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/28/world-beard-moustache-competition-drug-dealer

If the Link gets removed search for a Guardian article "Trip to world beard competition ends in arrest for alleged dark web drug dealer"


[0 Points] GirlsDontLikeIce:

Maybe you should write stories about shit you know?

Nobody in your grade 10 english class is going to be impressed with your drug hacker story.


[-1 Points] Cannablys:

I'll provide an actual answer. Probably backtracing their records, and connecting the dots between them and another persona they would put on. I'd recommend looking up how they've caught previously market owners and vendors as a good way to find information. /r/DNMBusts could aid in your search.