In an astonishing hit to the Darknet, four of it’s most popular marketplaces all went down at the same time. Marketplaces involved include Tochka, Wall Street, Trade Route and Dream Market. It has been suspected, according to details of the event, these markets that went down, wasn’t due to government involvement. Users believe the sites were brought down thanks to a hacker that disrupted the coding by launching a DDoS attack.
A DDoS attack, otherwise referred to as a Distributed Denial of Service attack, is where hackers get into the internet’s DNS, or Domain Name System, in order to find areas within the code to effectively disconnect the website from the internet. Essentially, they find a way to disallow anyone from using the site’s URL to access the website in question.
Users of these popular Darknet marketplaces are very worried about their accounts and the remaining bitcoins they had stored. Experts say the only way to have some kind of defense against losing such funds is to make sure you only deposit bitcoins that you will immediately use. It is neither wise nor recommended to store excess bitcoins on sites like that for a number of reasons.
Often times, when Darknet websites go offline, it is either due to a government takeover, hackers messing with the system, or site admins executing an exit scam to run off with users’ bitcoins and shut down the website. The DDoS attack these four marketplaces have experienced was also used to hack the well known WikiLeaks website.
Though experts involved with these sites will most likely be able to fix the problem and bring the marketplaces back online, it is not known when that will happen. But, considering no one believes these sites are down due to government involvement, users are anticipating their return.