AlphaBay's dark web site is now accessible not only via Tor, like the original AlphaBay, but also I2P, a less popular anonymity system that DeSnake encourages users to switch to. (DeSnake says he uses male pronouns.) The revived version of AlphaBay, for instance, allows users to buy and sell only with the cryptocurrency Monero, which is designed to be far more difficult to trace than Bitcoin, whose blockchain has proven to sometimes allow powerful forms of financial tracking. I am here to make amends to that."Ī kind of practical paranoia permeated DeSnake's messages to WIRED, both on a personal level and in his plans for AlphaBay's revamped technical protections. "AlphaBay name was put in bad light after the raids. He was driven to rebuild AlphaBay, he says, after reading about an FBI presentation on the circumstances of Cazes' arrest that he deemed disrespectful. Cazes was found dead of an apparent suicide in a Thai jail cell a week after his arrest like many in the dark web community, DeSnake believes Cazes was murdered in prison. "The biggest reason I am returning is to make the AlphaBay name be remembered as more than the marketplace which got busted and the founder made out to have committed suicide," DeSnake writes.
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He communicated with WIRED via encrypted text messages, from a frequently changing series of pseudonymous accounts, after proving his identity by signing a public message with DeSnake's original PGP key, which multiple security researchers verified. In an extended chat interview, DeSnake tells WIRED how he walked away unscathed from the takedown of AlphaBay, why he has resurfaced now, and what his plans are for the resurrected, once-dominant online black market. After four years off the radar, he's not keeping quiet about his return. Now, four years after his market's demise, DeSnake appears to be back online and has relaunched AlphaBay under his own singular leadership. The FBI called the disruption of the site a “landmark operation.”īut the fate of one key player in that massive black market scheme was never explained: AlphaBay's former number-two administrator, security specialist, and self-described cofounder, who went by the name DeSnake. Thai police arrested the site's 26-year-old administrator, Alexandre Cazes, in Bangkok, and the FBI seized AlphaBay's central server in Lithuania, wiping out a marketplace that was selling hundreds of millions of dollars a year worth of hard drugs, hacked data, and other contraband to its 400,000-plus registered users.
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Just over four years ago, the US Department of Justice announced the takedown of AlphaBay, the biggest dark web market bust in history.