"Have you ever wanted to build your own reactor or make nukes? This is probably the only missing ingredient you could not find until now." In a well-hidden "corner" of the internet, the user named FRIM writes the above. The "ingredient" he promises is a small amount of uranium. And he sells it himself for about 100 dollars.
FRIM sells uranium on Evolution. What is currently considered the best shopping spot on the so-called "darknet", where everything is sold. From drugs to weapons and stolen credit card information. These Internet have a short "lifespan" and the first and most famous, Silk Road, was shut down about a year ago by the FBI, while its successor, Silk Road 2.0, had the same fate last month, as the Washington Post writes.
User FRIM knows this well. “Who knows how long Evolution will last?” he writes at the end of the relevant ad, concluding, “That’s why you need to order enough uranium now, so that your dreams of threatening the United Nations with nukes don’t get wrecked .”
For the uninitiated, it can be difficult to find Evolution, as Christopher Ingraham, who conducted the research for the American newspaper, writes. One must use a special Web browser, Tor, and then do an extensive search to find the address of the specific website.
But once he gets the hang of it, he finds that this illegal trade is almost as easy as ordering on Amazon or eBay. In fact, many of the items for sale are anything but illegal, just plain weird. As for the piece of uranium FRIM is selling, it turns out it's tiny and can be found on Amazon for just $39.95.
The darknet, which includes dozens of online marketplaces, often doesn't live up to the scary reputation that its pursuers often give it. The FBI, for example, calls them "harmful, criminal online marketplaces." While the darknet has become known as a place to buy drugs and information used in illegal activities—like identity theft—there are many other goods for sale there. Some are illegal, some are not.
The Washington Post tried to figure out what was going on by logging into Evolution. Once he did, he saw a list of about 22,000 items that were available for sale that day.
Purchases are made in bitcoins - the digital currency - and the items are shipped wherever the buyer wants, while both sides place particular importance on smart packaging, which does not reveal the contents to prying eyes.
In the drugs category on Evolution, there are over 12,000 for sale. Among them, 3,064 listings are for cannabis, 2,177 for ecstasy and 1,125 for psychedelic pills. In addition, buyers also leave comments. On this website, drug ads make up about 54% of the items for sale. In this category, marijuana is by far the most popular item, as it concerns 1/4 of the listings. Ecstasy, cocaine and speed concern another 3,800 listings, while there are another 448 for heroin and over 1,000 for pills, mainly painkillers, and stimulants.
But beyond these "dark" items, there are a large number of commonplace items, such as many e-books and guides on how to achieve anything, from hacking a computer to ordering free pizza in Great Britain.
Many of them are simple guides on how to turn a stolen credit card or other account into cash. Particularly popular is the ATM hacking guide, which claims to teach someone how to "withdraw" $20, but get $80 in hand with "one simple process," as it says.
Outside the zone of illegality, for $5 you can buy the "Ultimate Guide to Texting Girls," while there is also an inexplicable obsession with free pizza, although the fact that this topic is in the "scam" category betrays that stolen credit card numbers are probably used for this.
Evolution makes no attempt to hide the fact that it is a marketplace for illegality. There is also a “scams” category, which has about 2,000 listings. In addition to general guides on how to get something, there are ads that deal with crimes involving real victims, mainly credit cards and other related information.
It is worth noting that, for example, a credit card number, with the expiration date, security code, name and address, is sold, and costs around $8.
Other popular listings in the “scams” category are for U.S. driver’s licenses, or social security numbers for as little as $10. Passports are rarer, but even for those there are plenty of ads. For a U.S. passport, you have to look in the “services” category and pay about $6,000.
There are also listings for Instagram and Facebook followers - 100 for about $2 - while if anyone needs to talk to someone, they can hire the user "HappyBirthday2U" for about $40.
Although law enforcement has turned its attention to these websites for gun trafficking, few weapons are for sale on Evolution. That doesn't mean, of course, that the trade in both drugs and stolen citizen data isn't worrisome. And that's why the FBI has its eye on such websites.
Source: iefimerida.gr
