The degree non-state actors are allowed to engage in OC responses and their roles in supporting State efforts/ as watchdogs to governments. A state’s ability to implement measures to combat money laundering and other related threats to the integrity of its financial system. The degree to which states are able to control their physical and cyber territory and infrastructure against organized criminal activities.
Top 5 Latin American Tech Hubs
Tor, short for “The Onion Router,” routes internet traffic through a global network of volunteer-operated servers to anonymize a user’s online activity. This technology initially had noble intentions, aiming to protect activists, whistleblowers, and individuals in repressive regimes. However, it soon became a double-edged sword as malicious actors began to exploit its capabilities for illicit purposes. Dark-web marketplaces attract sophisticated cybercriminals adept at launching phishing scams, malware attacks, or ransomware threats.
How Complex Are Dark Web Marketplaces Currently?
The MITRE ATT&CK framework provides a comprehensive view of adversary tactics. Download Tor Browser from torproject.org—your entry to the onion network. A comprehensive overview of 2025’s leading darknet trading hubs—each with unique strengths in listings, crypto options, and vendor reliability. Learn how to automate financial risk reports using AI and news data with this guide for product managers, featuring tools from Webz.io and OpenAI. As mentioned earlier, launching a cyberattack doesn’t require any hacking skills.
Criminal actors that are embedded in, and act from within, the state’s apparatus. An assessment of the impact and influence of a specific criminal actor type on society. Consumption of the drug is considered in determining the reach of the criminal market.
- Believe it or not, some dark web marketplaces have pretty advanced systems for building trust.
- Argentina’s and Uruguay’s seaports are also increasingly being exploited for cocaine shipments, with local criminal groups involved and brokering deals with larger regional and/or global entities, like the PCC and ‘Ndrangheta.
- The rusty Friendship Bridge, built in 1965, spans the half a kilometre gap separating the two countries and along its narrow paths, men and women lug all manner of goods between Ciudad del Este and the Brazilian city of Foz do Iguaçu.
- This would also suggest rising competition between traditional local criminal, mafia-like groups and groups from outside the region that are trying to penetrate the market.
- The technology behind the darknet is actively maintained and continues to evolve.
- From there, these products are then passed on to distributors, which are the dark web marketplaces in this context.
Despite improvements in recent years, the legal framework pertaining to access to information in the country remains weak. Although accountability in relation to election financing is set in law, no monitoring mechanisms to reduce the risk of financing political campaigns with criminal assets have been developed. Notably, the newly revealed incident follows several other recent data breaches affecting Paraguay.
A weak rule of law, bureaucratic legal procedures, and poor law enforcement create uncertainty, undermining the very economic dynamism that has put the country on the map. Additionally, the forces of interventionism and statism must be kept at bay—history has shown time and again that even the most promising economies can be derailed by bad policy and government intervention. ASAP drives 25,000+ listings and $4M monthly across BTC, XMR, LTC, and USDT, holding a 7% share.
Paraguay Is Being Targeted By Cybercriminals – 74 Million Citizen Records For Sale
While the official unemployment rate hovers at around 19 percent, only 5.34 percent of Paraguayans are fully employed. Due to the country’s reliance on agriculture, many people work in the informal sector. “The statistics showing historically low unemployment are a farce,” Luis Rojas Villagra, an economist at the National University, told The New York Times in 2013.
Loss Of Anonymity
It is estimated that hundreds of private owners smuggle 40,000 kilos of cocaine through the airport each month. It has a bidding feature, with new batches of stolen data being frequently added. Active for a decade since 2014, it is a widely used credit card shop used to source stolen credit card information such as dumps, CVVs, Wholesale Accounts. It maintains a very strict level of user verification and integration with an official Telegram account to provide real-time updates to users. Various cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Monero can be used to make purchases. The Abacus Market links to the new dark web marketplace sections and took over much of the vacuum left by the AlphaBay takedown.
Stay Within Legal Boundaries
They suffer losses such as identity theft, financial loss, and emotional distress due to damage to their personal and professional lives. They really don’t care about the loss and dilemma of the victims whose data has been stolen. It’s also a marketplace for digital mercenaries; you’ll find everything from solo hackers offering their skills to well-organized groups that take on more complex or high-stakes projects. Some even have connections to criminal organizations and, in more serious cases, government-backed operations.
Trade Craft
A weak institutional foundation deters investment and slows private sector growth, ultimately threatening Paraguay’s economic momentum. If Paraguay wants to solidify itself as a true land of opportunity, strengthening its institutions should be its next priority. Dark markets include features similar to those found in legitimate e-commerce platforms, such as product listings, user reviews, ratings, and customer support.
It supports PGP encryption, two-factor authentication (2FA), alerts against fake sites (antiphishing), and a verification system for sellers. Its interface is easy to navigate, and it has a reliable escrow system, as well as allowing payments with Bitcoin and Monero. All of this has made it one of the most reliable markets still active in 2025. Activities on dark-web marketplaces are closely monitored by international law enforcement agencies. Purchasing or selling illegal goods—such as controlled substances, counterfeit documents, or stolen data—can result in significant legal penalties, including fines, criminal charges, and imprisonment.
First, in the USA, it is a federal offense to use the USPS for any of these transactions. If the buyer or seller gets caught, there are significant legal ramifications. Note that loading sites with TOR usually takes considerably longer than on the clearnet. It may take anywhere from 15 seconds to several minutes for a page to load, depending on network and site demand. To avoid immediate shutdown, the servers hosting DNMs must be in countries with lax legal regulations. This means the server admins must pay significantly higher hosting fees than they would on the clearnet, for less reliable service.
Couple Takes Heat For Selling $1,000 Tickets To Their Wedding Here’s Why It’s Great
Exodus Marketplace started to become popular after the shutdown of Genesis Market, and it replaced it successfully. It claims to control more than 7,000 bots from 190+ countries, with data prices ranging from $3 to $10, based on the quality it offers. The marketplace has a simple interface, lets users filter logs easily, and accepts Bitcoin, Monero, and Litecoin for payments. Just as there are new entrants, the dark web has its veteran markets too, and Brian’s Club is one such market. Brian’s Club is one of the best place to buy stolen credit card info, including CVVs, dumps, and even full account packages without revealing your identity. You can even find things such as BIN checkers and PayPal cookie converters.
Illicit flows in the region are also facilitated by the presence of an extremely complex enabling environment. The result is that the hub suffers from higher-than-average levels of violence, including homicides, and the consequences of this criminality ripple outwards across the region. Finally, our research also clearly demonstrated that Paraguay, with its hugely permissive security and legislative environment, functions as the linchpin for much of the illicit trade in this hub.
Power Your Insights With Data You Can Trust
Of course, the actor could have converted the data into different file formats during exfiltration, but this may indicate that the attack vectors could be slightly different. Such a leak could occur without exploiting any specific vulnerability, but rather by leveraging exposed access credentials. Based on our analysis, with a high level of confidence, infostealer activity could be the root cause of the data breach—one or several IT staffers may have been infected with malicious code, leading to their credentials being exposed. Darknet markets trace their origins to the early 2000s, with the advent of Tor in 2002 by the U.S.
