Alphabay Underground Black Market Target of Phishing

AlphaBay has been recognized as the biggest secret illegitimate marketplace on the Internet that evolved to substitute the non-operational portals namely Silk Road 2 and Silk Road after the two websites were shutdown and their operators arrested.

The forum works solely through Tor (.onion domain), while it trades illicit merchandise like stolen payment card details and other user information, weapons, drugs and a host of other nefarious and shady goods. Not just this which users should be worried of: a few miscreants on AlphaBay even attempt at filching various people's sensitive credentials through the dispatch of messages that so deceive them that they eventually land on phishing sites. Netcraft posted this, February 16, 2016.

Running at pwoah7foa6au2pul.me.pn, the said phishing website's domain is a near replica of the actual domain of AlphaBay viz. pwoah7f5ivq74fmp.onion. Interestingly, in contrast to the actual website, the copycat site operates on the authorized World Wide Web. Moreover, anybody can access it, including those who aren't using Tor.

The phishing site's objective pertains to helping collect account login particulars which members of AlphaBay may want, although the reasons aren't lucid. Possibly other cyber-criminals run the website because they wish towards acquiring admission into people's A/Cs while aiming at defrauding them alternatively; unleash bulk e-mail messages on the website. However, agents of law enforcement too may run the copycat site to use it like a honeypot.

It was Thursday last when the phishing website was discovered during the attack. It continues to operate even now. The site imitates the actual login page of AlphaBay Marketplace, while encourages victims for feeding their combos of usernames and passwords. Thieves have no honor amid themselves. To show this further, the phishing website's HTML source seems as being replicated from one earlier similar looking website utilizing domain-name onion-market.co. Ever-since, the registrar, GoDaddy, of the domain-name repossessed it, a characteristic parameter of domains paid from illegitimate funds alternatively brought under charge-backs.

Within the second instance, agencies of law enforcement maybe attempting at garnering details about gullible cyber miscreants so as for exposing their actual source as also compile one database about familiar users of AlphaBay.

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