Another blow to the Dark Web and online drug dealers.
Today, the owner of Black Market Reloaded, another underground drug market and Silk Road competitor, announced the closure of the site after security breaches were discovered. The event marks the third drug website shutdown in less than a month, following Atlantis and Silk Road.
In a message titled “The End of the Road,” the owner of the BMR website, who goes by the nickname “backopy,” admitted that another site administrator had stolen the website’s code and leaked it online. In the short message (shown below), backopy states that the website was hacked by a Virtual Private Server (VPS) administrator during the early days of its purchase.
“This means that the website can no longer function,” backopy reported.
The online drug market “opened” around June 2011, as a competitor to the infamous Silk Road. Silk Road was seized by the FBI earlier this month. Although it did not have as many customers as Silk Road, authorities estimate that it had made sales of $1,200,000,000 since January 2011. BMR’s online shelves contained all kinds of drugs, as well as several firearms.
Backopy said that the identity of the site's users has not been revealed and that it does not really know how much of the website's code has been leaked.
“The code had links to the rest of the infrastructure,” Backopy said. “It would be unwise to leave the site running.”
The code appeared on a German forum by a person with the nickname “dosadmin” who posted it in public view, as reported by Forbes.
After the closure of Atlantis and Silk Road, many sellers and buyers reportedly moved to BMR to continue their activities. In one post, someone claiming to be a representative of Atlantis reported that BMR membership had nearly doubled in the two weeks following the closure of Silk Road.
Of course, the reason why this particular website was shut down may have nothing to do with the one its owner claims. The authorities' attack on Silk Road and its closure proved that these are very difficult times for online Escobars.
