NZ Darknet Market Forums

MrRobot

Member

Registered: 2019-10-25

Posts: 55

Any evidence of LE activity on here?

As i would suspect, the local authorities must monitor this place and be keen to shut it down, has anyone seen any evidence of this? Is this going to be a matter of when rather than if? How confident are we that this place could be here to stay for some time longer?

squarecircle

Member

Registered: 2019-10-15

Posts: 53

Re: Any evidence of LE activity on here?

I was recently thinking about that myself. I don't have an answer to your question but you reminded me of an article tormarket posted three months ago. It was called "More spies sees Customs seize more than $1 billion worth of drugs in six months" (1). In the article they talk about the government having spy's to disrupt the importation of drugs into NZ. It sounds like their focus might be the importation into NZ rather than local drug trade.

Here are two interesting quotes from it:

"The move follows a Government investment in the agency, which saw more spies posted offshore, to prevent drug smuggling by disrupting criminal networks. Customs are expecting to have created about 30 new roles in intelligence, investigations and analysis, by the end of the financial year, who will understand where and when to make high impact interventions."

"In recent years, Customs has significantly increased its focus on preventing drugs from being sent to New Zealand. This offshore collaboration with international law enforcement partners has resulted in around 230 kilograms of drugs being stopped from reaching New Zealand in the first six months of 2019, and has prevented around an estimated $260 million of further potential social and economic harm to our country."

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/114626875/more-spies-sees-customs-seize-more-than-1-billion-worth-of-drugs-in-six-months

On a separate note, I am not sure of the effort reward of trying to stop a website like tor-market. From what I heard of how alpha-bay and silk road got shut down they have have no reliable ways of stopping sites other than searching for opsec mistakes. It's been a while since I looked into it though, so I could be remembering wrong.

MrRobot

Member

Registered: 2019-10-25

Posts: 55

Re: Any evidence of LE activity on here?

That's some interesting research, thank you.

Given what you said above a potential avenue for infiltration would be targeting the overseas darkweb markets and figuring out how they package their products and what avenue they use, whether it's through auckland mail center or the ports and where they come from. By profiling the methods used it would result in customs being able to target certain packages, though I guess this is nothing new.

It's interesting that on the online bible for darkwet markets it did list this country as a "difficult" place to get drugs into, yet here we are and our streets are flooded with MD and meth thats only dropped in price, but this could be as simple as the share quantity of packages coming in, they simply don't have the resources to xray and run the dogs over everything. Its an arms race that is based on the law of averages.

What sparked my curiosity was a post made a few days ago by a supposedly US based vendor offering products, to me this seems like a good example of a classic phishing attempt by LE. Regarding the 30 extra intelligent staff, I would hope they were too snowed under catching the ridiculous amount of meth coming into this country as this site surely is a drop in the ocean compared to that surely? Of course other drugs could easily be picked up by accident as a result of the effort to target meth.

Please don't quote me on this but I do believe silk road was brought down by profiling the guy who ran it? He seemed to get a big complex over running the site and attempting to put a bounty out on someone, I think his own emotion was his demise in my opinion.

In a perfect world this place deserves to be left as it creates a safe place for drug users, no matter what the govt believes, drugs are here to stay period. Let's just hope the LE has bigger fish to fry.

Last edited by MrRobot (2019-10-26 06:40)

TormarketSupport

Verified Vendor

Registered: 2019-03-31

Posts: 716

Re: Any evidence of LE activity on here?

There is no evidence of this. However Massey university is currently researching darknet market use and I think there is a full time position doing the research. The Silk road made a series of huge blunders like allowing LE to be admins on the site. Right now the police are focused on confiscating weapons and looking for the next terrorist, but its possible those 30 spies might get involved with darknet.

astroburp

Member

Registered: 2019-05-21

Posts: 123

Re: Any evidence of LE activity on here?

I remember reading an article about a new Zealand cop (pig) who went to some international conference on stopping dark web activities..
Also a good watch is the vice doco on the australian mail center and how they stop dark web orders. They talk about having international "intelligence" that would let them know about incomign shipments. this must have been when (i think) dream market was compromised and LE was reading messages between vendors and customers. As a seller on tor market, i am always aware that there is likely a new zealand cop (pig) whose job it is to order drugs from local vendors and try to lift DNA or fingerprints.

MrRobot

Member

Registered: 2019-10-25

Posts: 55

Re: Any evidence of LE activity on here?

Any idea what they would teach the police in such a conference? How does one go about taking down a darkweb market?

You do bring up a interesting vulnerability with LE ordering from vendors. For example, they could order a drug, then back trace the courier package. In other words, approach courier company, see where the package was dropped off, what time it was scanned and then check security footage for who delivered it? I assume most courier drop of points are inside a building where there will be security cameras?

Also they could take the drug dogs and spend a day in a local depot? At least that's what I would do if I was a cop and have resources allocated to such a thing.

Last edited by MrRobot (2019-10-29 21:50)

TormarketSupport

Verified Vendor

Registered: 2019-03-31

Posts: 716

Re: Any evidence of LE activity on here?

Without facial recognition cameras, it may still be a lot of work identifying someone at a busy post office.
Vendors should always leave their phone at home though, due to tracking.

ScoobySnacks

Member

Registered: 2019-11-01

Posts: 21

Re: Any evidence of LE activity on here?

Although I'm sure some of LE are informed about this site, I'm sure they have greater targets they're targeting at this time, I'd assume they'd be monitoring Tor Market and the Forums though

astroburp

Member

Registered: 2019-05-21

Posts: 123

Re: Any evidence of LE activity on here?

there was a time you could drop parcels in a parcel post box at some z stations and i think countdown i think they are gone now.. that would have made it easy if your parcels are very discrete and generic. i would not put anyhting past the police, as a vendor i take as few risks as possible. i wont go into a courier or post shop and have them scan in something illegal that could be the one that is ordered by a small team in some big police station. and there are signs on the doors tell ya no sunnies caps or hoodie. Or bike helmets. bike helmet would be interesting opsec

TormarketSupport

Verified Vendor

Registered: 2019-03-31

Posts: 716

Re: Any evidence of LE activity on here?

If the parcel fits into red letter boxes, then that will work but tracking is less reliable. Also it looks more odd but not sure if that matters.
To clarify the issue with cellphones - if they know two or more locations that parcels were sent from, then it reveals the cellphone that visited them. The more locations they know the less false positives but even two locations could be sufficient to identify the cellphone.

Ruakaka

Member

Registered: 2019-04-09

Posts: 154

Re: Any evidence of LE activity on here?

a new Zealand cop (pig)

lol

EDIT:
I don't think NZ police cares much about this market unless they see 100+ feedback per day on the meth listings or something substantial.
So many drugs are coming in from overseas, that's probably their main priority. Most of the bulk meth sold in nz either come from china, which they're already on the case about or are manufactuered locally, which they're also already on the case for. Darknet shit seems quite small time in comparison.

I'm also aware of a non encrypted community online full of drug sales, classes A/B/C. People arrange to meet up in person. Piss poor opsec. This has been going on for a while now and its not hard to find the community if you know how to use google. If these communities haven't been taken down, then I'm pretty sure the thing about police focusing majority of their attention on international syndicates is true.

IMO!!

Last edited by Ruakaka (2019-11-03 11:20)

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astroburp

Member

Registered: 2019-05-21

Posts: 123

Re: Any evidence of LE activity on here?

Yeah i think ive mentioned before the customs website has statistics on all the seizures at the auckland mail center, there are 20+ siezures a day and the volumes are on average several hundred grams per parcel, of mdma, meth etc

MrRobot

Member

Registered: 2019-10-25

Posts: 55

Re: Any evidence of LE activity on here?

To clarify the issue with cellphones - if they know two or more locations that parcels were sent from, then it reveals the cellphone that visited them. The more locations they know the less false positives but even two locations could be sufficient to identify the cellphone.

Are you able to explain this further? Why do they need more than two locations? I gather you are talking about when they have no idea of the cell fone used, and track everyone who walks in around the time the parcel is delivered?

MrRobot

Member

Registered: 2019-10-25

Posts: 55

Re: Any evidence of LE activity on here?

Yeah i think ive mentioned before the customs website has statistics on all the seizures at the auckland mail center, there are 20+ siezures a day and the volumes are on average several hundred grams per parcel, of mdma, meth etc

Gee they going to have to build more courts and jails, surely they wouldn't let a few hundred grams slip by with just a love letter.... Makes me wonder how on earth vendors on here are successful if they catching so much? Unless 20+seizures a day is only the top of the ice burg.

TormarketSupport

Verified Vendor

Registered: 2019-03-31

Posts: 716

Re: Any evidence of LE activity on here?

To clarify the issue with cellphones - if they know two or more locations that parcels were sent from, then it reveals the cellphone that visited them. The more locations they know the less false positives but even two locations could be sufficient to identify the cellphone.

Are you able to explain this further? Why do they need more than two locations? I gather you are talking about when they have no idea of the cell fone used, and track everyone who walks in around the time the parcel is delivered?

They certainly need more than one (unless vendor was only person there), 2, 3, 4, .. .as the set grows bigger it excludes more and more possibilities. Assuming the information is limited to what phones visited which post offices each separate day. I guess if they visit same post office each day , then it would take longer to identify because there are probably other people that do same thing.