YOU’VE PROBABLY NEVER heard of White House Market. Google can't find it. Its vendors don't advertise much. The few public references to the website are on Reddit forums or specialty tech blogs. But among users of the dark web, WHM was, for years, the go-to online marketplace for illegal drugs and fraudulent credit cards.

The dark web has a shady reputation. Hidden below the transparency and visibility of the internet's surface, the complex anonymity networks that make up the dark web host and distribute all kinds of murky content: illicit drugs, child abuse material,

The pandemic has provided a huge new opportunity for hackers, scammers, and criminals to target frightened and vulnerable people.

To regular folks with some basic computer skills the Dark Web seems to be Enemy #1. People talk about it like it’s the Internet Demogorgon. And the media doesn’t help either, not to mention InfoSec marketing departments. As far as they’re concerned, if you don’t say the name of your password manager 7 times before bed the Dark Web will haunt your closet.

In a bid to thwart censorship attempts, the BBC News website is now available via Tor.

I did not know Bryan Njoroge. I had never met him, talked to him, or encountered him online. In ordinary circumstances, I would have never heard of his death, more than 6,500 kilometres away. Yet in late June 2018, a message arrived in my inbox. Its subject read: “Suicide (or Murder)?” The email contained a link to a webpage showing unequivocally that someone wanted Bryan dead.

Refugees from the anonymous 8chan forum are flooding into a new censorship-resistant home on the dark web, and inadvertently giving up their anonymity along the way. A reincarnated version of the hate-filled forum, now linked to three mass shootings, appeared Monday when the original 8chan lost its hosting service. The new site, called 08chan (with a leading zero), has no affiliation with the original and it’s not entirely clear who set it up, but 8chan’s diaspora have been flooding in as word of the site spreads through right-wing social media.

Debates over gun regulations make headlines across the world, but there’s an underground operation for weapons that has drawn very little attention – until now. Researchers from Michigan State University crept into the dark web to investigate how firearms are anonymously bought and sold around the world. “We know so little about the distribution of firearms sold on the dark web that it’s kind of a black hole, similar to illicit pharmaceuticals and narcotics: We know people buy them online, but we don’t know to what extent,” said Thomas Holt, MSU professor of criminal justice and co-author.

In 2015, WIRED published a list of the ‘dark web drug lords who got away.’ That list included the Dread Pirate Roberts 2 (DPR2), the creator of the second Silk Road site, which launched almost immediately after the FBI ended the first with the famous arrest of founder Ross Ulbricht. Under DPR2, Silk Road 2 went on to rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars a day. The FBI shut that one down too and arrested its remaining administrator. By that time, DPR2 had already passed ownership of the site on and, publicly, it looked like he had evaded prosecution.

For years, the arrest and case has been kept under-wraps. Friday, a court sentenced Thomas White to 5 years and 4 months for his role in running a huge dark web drug marketplace.

Hitman-for-hire darknet sites are all scams. But some people turn up dead nonetheless.

One of the most popular Dark Web hosting services – Daniel’s Hosting – was slaughtered last week when attackers hosed it clean of about 6,500 hidden services. The admin says they’re gone for good: he hasn’t even figured out where the vulnerability is yet. The administrator at Daniel’s Hosting is a German software developer named Daniel Winzen, who acknowledged the attack on the hosting provider’s portal. Winzen said that it happened on Thursday night, a day after a PHP zero-day exploit was leaked.

Dutch police detail for the first time how they secretly hijacked Hansa, Europe's most popular dark web market.

I spent three weeks studying FreeHacks, one of the dark web’s biggest platform for hackers. From passports to credit cards, nothing is safe.

The incident offers a lesson to business leaders on how to deprovision employees facing dismissal and protect assets.

Criminals are using the darker corners of the internet, hard-to-track digital currency and creative shipping techniques to sell illicit guns to Canadians, the RCMP warns. The message comes as thousands of young people across North America demand an end to gun violence, and the Trudeau government moves to tighten laws on the licensing, sale and tracing of firearms.

A "warped and sadistic" paedophile who blackmailed victims and shared abuse tips and images on the dark web has been jailed for 32 years. Cambridge graduate Matthew Falder, 29, admitted 137 charges - including rape - against 46 people, some of which were in court to see him jailed. He coerced victims into acts including licking toilet seats and self-harming. At Birmingham Crown Court, Judge Philip Parker QC labelled Falder an "internet highwayman" with a "lust to control".

Bitcoin is losing its luster with some of its earliest and most avid fans -- criminals -- giving rise to a new breed of virtual currency.

Google is digging into the dark corners of the web to better secure people's accounts. Looking at cybercriminal black markets and public forums, the company found millions of usernames and passwords stolen directly through hacking. It also uncovered billions usernames and passwords indirectly exposed in third-party data breaches.

Four of the world’s key illicit marketplaces—Dream, Tochka, Trade Route, and Wall Street—went down suddenly on Friday. And no one seems to know why.