Dark web legend ‘Xanax King’ arrested again

A 41-year-old man from the Californian city of Martinez was charged with possession of equipment for producing counterfeit drugs. At the time of his arrest, Jeremy Donagal – an old school dark web vendor previously known as ‘Xanax King’ – was on supervised release from a 2015 conviction for manufacturing and selling counterfeit drugs. According … Read more

How to communicate when your phone is being tapped?

In the world of surveillance, there are rarely any absolutes — and that applies to guarantees, too. If NSA, GCHQ and associated agencies really want to get at your communications, and are prepared to invest their resources in doing so, they will usually succeed to some extent. But there is no need to be fatalistic … Read more

The dark web down under: what’s driving the rise and rise of NZ’s ‘Tor Market’ for illegal drugs?

Getty Images New Zealand is generally proud of being a world leader, but there’s one claim that might not be universally admired: being home to the longest running English-language market for illegal drugs on the so-called “darknet”. Known as “Tor Market”, it has been active since March 2018 and has outlived several larger and better … Read more

The ‘Optus hacker’ claims they’ve deleted the data. Here’s what experts want you to know

T. Schneider/Shutterstock Shortly after Australian telecommunications company Optus announced the identity data of millions of customers had been stolen, a person claiming to be the hacker announced they would delete the data for US$1 million. When Optus didn’t pay, the purported hacker published 10,000 stolen records and threatened to release ten thousand more every day … Read more

How the world’s biggest dark web platform spreads millions of items of child sex abuse material — and why it’s hard to stop

Shutterstock Child sexual abuse material is rampant online, despite considerable efforts by big tech companies and governments to curb it. And according to reports, it has only become more prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic. This material is largely hosted on the anonymous part of the internet — the “darknet” – where perpetrators can share it … Read more

Here’s how much your personal information is worth to cybercriminals – and what they do with it

The black market for stolen personal information motivates most data breaches. aleksey-martynyuk/iStock via Getty Images Data breaches have become common, and billions of records are stolen worldwide every year. Most of the media coverage of data breaches tends to focus on how the breach happened, how many records were stolen and the financial and legal … Read more