Security Snafu Closes Dark Web Marketplace

A dark web marketplace has met its security match.

BBC reported yesterday (Aug. 26) that Agora, an online black market, has suspended its site as a result of security issues. Those security flaws were said to impact the network that could be connected to the location of Agora’s servers. As of now, there’s no timeframe for when the marketplace will be up again.

In general, this could mean that this dark website doesn’t have the proper security measures in place to protect its users. This could be resolved by reviewing the vulnerability in the Tor’s network security.

“Once again, something that many people were putting their trust into on the Internet is being revealed to be not quite so trustworthy after all,” security expert Graham Cluley told BBC.

Agora, of course, has been at the center of controversy recently as it’s known as a place to buy or sell drugs. It also just recently announced that it would end the sale of guns.

As it relates to the security issue, Agora administrators wrote the following on the site: “Recently research … shed some light on vulnerabilities in Tor Hidden Services protocol which could help to de-anonymize server locations.”

“[There had been] suspicious activity around our servers, which led us to believe that some of the attacks described in the research could be going on … At this point, while we don’t have a solution ready, it would be unsafe to keep our users using the service, since they would be in jeopardy. Thus, and to our great sadness, we have to take the market offline for a while, until we can develop a better solution. This is the best course of action for everyone involved,” the statement read.

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