A Market in Dream: the Rapid Development of Anonymous Cybercrime

In this paper we have conducted a comprehensive measurement and analysis on the Dream market, an anonymous online market that uses cryptocurrency as transaction currency. We first collect data between October 30th 2018 and March 1st 2019. Then we use decision tree-based approach to classify goods. Following we analyze the category of goods sold in the market, the shipping place of vendors. By analyzing more than 1,970,303 items, we find the goods sold in Dream Market are mainly drugs and digital goods. We estimate the total sales of all vendors, and find that an average monthly income is $14 million during the measurement period, which means that the market commission income is more than $560,000 per month. Based on these data, we use transaction cost theory to analyze the transaction attributes of illegal transactions, which shows that anonymous online market can reduce transaction cost of illegal transactions. We finally discuss the results analyzed and the intervention policy, as well as recent DDoS attacks and future trends of illegal transactions in anonymous online market.

[1]  Luca Allodi,et al.  Economic Factors of Vulnerability Trade and Exploitation , 2017, CCS.

[2]  Kyle J. Mayer,et al.  Contract design as a firm capability: An integration of learning and transaction cost perspectives , 2007 .

[3]  Nicolas Christin,et al.  Traveling the silk road: a measurement analysis of a large anonymous online marketplace , 2012, WWW.

[4]  T. Holt,et al.  Examining the risk reduction strategies of actors in online criminal markets , 2015 .

[5]  W. Stol,et al.  The Use of Online Crime Markets by Cybercriminal Networks: A View From Within , 2017 .

[6]  R. V. Wegberg,et al.  Lost in the Dream? Measuring the effects of Operation Bayonet on vendors migrating to Dream Market , 2018 .

[7]  O. Williamson,et al.  The mechanisms of governance , 1996 .

[8]  Oliver E. Williamson,et al.  Asset specificity and economic organization , 1985 .

[9]  Bram Klievink,et al.  Plug and Prey? Measuring the Commoditization of Cybercrime via Online Anonymous Markets , 2018, USENIX Security Symposium.

[10]  Dirk Grunwald,et al.  Shining Light in Dark Places: Understanding the Tor Network , 2008, Privacy Enhancing Technologies.

[11]  Tyler Moore,et al.  Measuring and Analyzing Search-Redirection Attacks in the Illicit Online Prescription Drug Trade , 2011, USENIX Security Symposium.

[12]  O. Williamson.  Transaction Cost Economics: An Introduction , 2007 .

[13]  Nicolas Christin,et al.  Measuring the Longitudinal Evolution of the Online Anonymous Marketplace Ecosystem , 2015, USENIX Security Symposium.

[14]  Scott W. Duxbury,et al.  The Network Structure of Opioid Distribution on a Darknet Cryptomarket , 2017, Journal of Quantitative Criminology.

[15]  Nick Mathewson,et al.  Tor: The Second-Generation Onion Router , 2004, USENIX Security Symposium.

[16]  Seungwon Shin,et al.  Cybercriminal Minds: An investigative study of cryptocurrency abuses in the Dark Web , 2019, NDSS.

[17]  E. Kaplan,et al.  Nonparametric Estimation from Incomplete Observations , 1958 .

[18]  J. Aldridge,et al.  Not an 'Ebay for Drugs': The Cryptomarket 'Silk Road' as a Paradigm Shifting Criminal Innovation , 2014 .

[19]  Thomas J. Holt,et al.  Examining signals of trust in criminal markets online , 2016, J. Cybersecur..