A black bus with a huge QR code on the side is abandoned in the middle of Novy Arbat street. One of the busiest places in Moscow. How to pass in the middle of Castellana. Cars cannot pass as the vehicle blocks the lanes and causes a crash.
The bus has a painted name, Kraken and a QR. Drivers get out of their cars and come to browse. They scan the code with their cell phones, which takes them directly to Kraken, a drug-selling website. Their most direct competitors, called OMG, Days later, they projected their logo on various buildings in Moscow for the whole world to see. As if it was Batman’s call.
These bizarre ad campaigns are part of the ongoing drug supermarket war on the Dark Web. It’s in the darkest and most inaccessible place on the internet. On those pages that are almost impossible to reach and where guns are sold, hitmen and above all drugs. Lots of drugs of all kinds.
Kraken, OMG, Solaris, Hydra or Mega are the names of some of these pages, some of them have already been closed by the police. The world leaders in this business (80% of the total according to Forbes) are the Russians and the Ukrainians. Two countries in a moving war Battle clash to these far dark corners of the internet.
Russians and Ukrainians are battling hacking, blocking and big data theft to take over a business estimated to be worth 1.3 billion euros. They always hid; now they are showing their breasts publicly. Even the Kremlin has been involved in this hybrid warfare episode played on the Dark Web.
Is it deep or dark?
For the inexperienced: What is the difference between the Deep Web and the Dark Web? José Rosell, spokesperson for S2Grupo, one of Spain’s largest cybersecurity companies, tells EL PERIÓDICO DE ESPAÑA.
“Deep Web, to put it in very simple words, The part of the Internet that is not available to normal users. It is necessary to enter with different tools and protocols, access is more difficult.. And within this Deep Web is the Dark Web, which is a much smaller percentage and where bad things are presented.
“You can get drugs, stolen databases, and even human organs on that darknet. The weirdest thing I’ve ever seen were children’s medical records. I don’t know why they’d want it, but what’s clear is that if they’re being offered, it’s because of demand. Payments on these kind of hidden pages are always cryptocurrencies.” done in the unit.”
Silk Road
The name of the leading page for the sale of drugs on the Deep Web was Silk Road. It was founded in 2011 by a young Physics graduate from the University of Texas named Ross Ulbricht. A brilliant student who failed in business and succeeded by building an online book selling portal. He began to fly forward, after a stumbling and emotional break. breaking Bad And He set up the first page selling illegal substances in the world.
He brought it up in the privacy of the Deep Web, given the illegal nature of the business. The FBI estimates it completed $1.2 billion in sales and 80 million profits in just 2 years. It’s a business model that works because 99% of transactions are satisfactorily executed. Silk Road was liquidated by the US federal police in 2013. A court found Ulbricht guilty of 7 crimes and sentenced him to life imprisonment, which he is currently serving at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Facility.
The Silk Road shutdown followed the same business model that Ulbricht had invented, prompting numerous mobs from around the world to try to take over the empty wand.. Pages that look the same as any online food, clothing or shoe store. From the classics (heroin, cocaine or marijuana) to new synthetics are offered. It has a shopping cart and a secure payment protocol.
After completing the transaction, the managers send some coordinates to the buyer, and the buyer can pick up the item relatively close to his home. Often, camel leaves drugs in parking boxeshighway traffic signs or other remote places that arouse suspicion.
hybrid warfare
The heir to that staff was Hydra. A Russian portal born after the merger of two forums (WayAway and LegalRC). It started its operations in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan in 2015. Because these are the countries where Ulbricht’s business model takes root. And now the Russians and the Ukrainians are facing each other on this battlefield.
Hydra has become the largest benchmark for the sale of illegal drugs in the world. He moved $5,200 million in his 7-year life, according to the FBI, and He came to hold 80% of the drug dealings on the Deep Web.
However, Hydra was seized by German and American police officers who seized $25 million worth of bitcoin in 2022. From there, the leadership was discussed again by other organizations. Because with the closure of Hydra, users started looking for alternatives. Some turned to the WayAway forum (pro-Russian) and others focused on the RuTor forum (pro-Ukrainian).
As if that wasn’t enough, WayAway is backed by Killnet, another pro-Kremlin cyber collective that has been placed on the US government’s list of terrorist groups. As José Rosell explains to this paper, “hybrid warfare is one of the elements. Warfare today is divided into three domains: battlefield, narrative, and cybernetics.. And Russia is a power in this regard. It could be about 300,000 fighters, 10 times stronger than Ukraine.”
outdoor advertising
The two parties already identified have launched their respective sales pages on the Deep Web. Pro-Ukrainian RuTor has launched a platform called Solaris. The pro-Russian WayAway enemies have defrauded Kraken, Hydra’s true heir. and the protagonist of the beginning of this report. And soon hostilities began.
In June 2022, WayAway was hacked by RuTor users who de-anonymized (disclosed their personal data) some users of that forum. The response from the pro-Russians came when they entered the Solaris page on January 13, 2023 and took full control, thus bypassing all the customers of the platform. Killnet cybercriminals who donated $280,000 to the Russian military to write their own names on the bombs (“We are the Killnet”) “A drug gang run by the Ukrainian government”.
This is the current situation for now: Kraken wins by smashing. By that time, a race had begun to become the most popular market in the drug market with extraordinary methods. Because such markets are always hidden in the depths of the Deep Web. But the need to become the best known in order to acquire more users and thus lead the market made them show their faces in the open.
Thus, the Kraken bus maneuver was not the only one. Other pages in the discussion (OMG, Solaris, Blacksprout or Mega) also used their tricks to get noticed. From projections on buildings to QR stickers in public places to advertisements on subway cars.
If they’ve now facilitated access, why aren’t the Russian authorities taking action? How can an online pharmacy advertise in the Moscow metro? Ekaterina Mizulina, director of the Safe Internet League, was the only one who seemed worried about this. The Public Office drew attention to this issue, warning that the main users of these pages are young people over the age of 15. But they remain silent from the Kremlin and continue without scattering a network of criminals who represent them in the hybrid war.