Dark Web Update: DreamMarket is Shutting Down

Dream Market, a notorious dark net website used to sell goods and services related to cybercrime, is shutting down next month. A report released by ZDNet noted that the announcement on the website came on the same day that Europol, alongside the FBI and DEA, gave a press release on an operation that targeted buyers and vendors on the dark web. The law enforcement agencies reportedly made tens of arrests and seized over 6 million pounds from these arrests. Dream Market has been servicing customers for close to 6 years. As of this date, the registration page of Dream Market shows an official shutdown of 04/30/2019 and is transferring its userbase to a new partner organization.

Recommendations:

• Update Cyber Attack Chatter rules to alert on potential new markets being advertised on social media. Users of Dream Market are already migrating over to secondary markets like Wall Street Market
• Continuously scan for mentions of your organization via the ZeroFOX platform on the "Dark Web" network data source
• If you do not have Dark Web enabled, please reach out to your ZeroFOX Account Manager for more information

Details

The supposed explanation behind the shutdown is that Dream Market has been continuously DDoSed and site maintainers cannot keep it running and will not pay a reportedly large ransom for the DDoSers to seize operations. The ransom to stop the DDoS of DreamMarket was $400,000 USD. Users have been speculating that this is the result of law enforcement seizing the website, but user and moderator waterchain posted and assured users that it has nothing to do with the police activity posted. The partner company was not named, but the onion address is weroidjkazxqds2l.onion. ZeroFOX Alpha Team has HIGH confidence that this partner organization, as well as other markets who have competed with Dream Market, will be the next evolution of cybercrime markets like Dream Market for criminals to use to sell goods and services.