“We found markets close down and pop up again with a refreshed set of security features, price hikes or even self-regulation of the kinds of products sold to avoid the spotlight. “When there is a crackdown there is a knock on effect, it is like a searchlight and markets become aware that they are going to get a bright light shined on them for that particular product, especially high risk product such as fentanyl. The researchers collected data over 352 weekdays, from 2 January to 20 December 2019, looking at eight “high street” darknet markets. Although using darknets like TOR isn’t illegal in Australia, it can raise suspicion. This can be true even if you want to use it for legal purposes only while remaining anonymous.
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Some fake sellers take your crypto and never ship what you ordered, or phishing sites that look like real marketplaces but steal your login info. And then there’s malware—click the wrong link or download the wrong file, and your device could get infected. In 2019, there were approximately 8,400 active sites on the dark web, selling thousands of products and services daily.
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Street drugs like cocaine, MDMA, ecstasy and marijuana were readily available, as were highly addictive substances like crystal methamphetamine and heroin. According to the latest Index, North America’s average drug trade score rose by 0.13 points, while the scores for Northern Europe and Western Europe increased by 0.31 and 0.27, respectively. Emerging markets in Asia and Latin America, such as China, Vietnam and Venezuela, are also becoming more involved in drug purchasing and, to some extent, manufacturing. Data suggests that almost 40 percent of the revenue from drug sales on the dark web is from marijuana.
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The most popular darknet in Australia and worldwide is TOR, thanks to its complex network of relays spread globally. Rerouting your traffic adds more layers of encryption to your data, which hides your true IP address better. Police seized a further 350g of prohibited drugs, electronics, and equipment consistent with the manufacture and supply of prohibited drugs. Strike Force Hallingbury was established by State Crime Command’s Cybercrime Squad in January 2025 to investigate the alleged supply of prohibited drugs of the dark web. In some jurisdictions, a person can be declared a drug trafficker by a court, if the quantities seized exceed a particular amount. A declaration by a court that a person is a drug trafficker can have serious lifelong consequences as well as allowing the state to seize and sell the individual’s property as proceeds of crime.
Abacus Market
Uswitch, a Finder-like service from the UK, researched online searches for the dark web in January 2021. The research gave the top 20 countries with search inquiries about the dark web and how to access it. When buying drugs on the dark web, customers often buy in bulk, at significantly reduced prices for purchases over a certain quantity.
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In 2024, darknet marketplaces generated over US$1.7 billion in cryptocurrency-enabled drug transactions, marking year-on-year growth of over 20%. This trend corresponds with a systematic increase in the criminal market scores relating to illicit drugs in the latest Global Organized Crime Index. These scores measure the pervasiveness and impact of various illicit economies and activities, and in 2023 all drug market indicators worsened compared to the previous iteration of the Index. The global score for the heroin trade rose from 3.97 to 4.08, for cocaine from 4.52 to 4.82, for cannabis from 5.10 to 5.34 and for synthetic drugs from 4.62 to 4.95 out of 10.
- It is difficult, however, to assess what quantities of the drugs are being sold, and how often they are being bought.
- It forms a small part of the deep web, the part of the internet that is not indexed by search engines like Google.
- Dr Martin says darknet trading is very difficult to police, but it’s not all bad news for law enforcement.
- While drugs make up a large chunk of seizures — there were 37,000 detections of illicit substances last year at this centre — the work of Border Force is broader than that.
- Detections of small quantity substances are rising, as Aussie drug users continue to flock to online black marketplaces where all kinds of items are easily bought and sent via post.
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The non-profit OnPoint NYC operates two sites there—one in East Harlem and one in Washington Heights. Cultivating Cannabis in South Australia In South Australia, it is an offence to cultivate cannabis unless a person does so with a medicinal cannabis license and in accordance with strict rules and controls. This page outlines the laws surrounding cultivating cannabis in South Australia, both when it is done lawfully …. Electoral Offences (NT) The NT Criminal Code Act 1983 contains a number of offences relating to elections and politics.
MDMA, methamphetamines and heroin sourced were consistently found to only contain the advertised substance. StudyFinds publishes digestible, agenda-free, transparent research summaries that are intended to inform the reader as well as stir civil, educated debate. We do not agree nor disagree with any of the studies we post, rather, we encourage our readers to debate the veracity of the findings themselves. All articles published on StudyFinds are vetted by our editors prior to publication and include links back to the source or corresponding journal article, if possible. Despite the growth in darknet drug trading in Australia, there are important reasons to remain optimistic regarding its overall impact on both drug consumers and broader society.
These figures represent only a snapshot of the larger industry, with at least 10 other marketplaces active on the Dark Web, a network of anonymous sites that hide the identity of the creators and their IP (internet protocol) addresses. Australia is an important player on the global black market for drugs, with one in three listings for methamphetamine and Codeine, an opioid pain medicine, coming from Australia. One in four listings for heroin and the psychedelic DMT (N,N-Dimethyltryptamine) are from Australia, as are 37 per cent of all listings of Oxycodone, another opioid pain medication. Stimulants — including methamphetamines, cocaine and speed — were the most readily available class of drugs, with 56 sellers offering 2060 listings. By data mining listings on the leading Dark Web marketplace, Agora, news.com.au can reveal that Australian dealers offered more than 9000 individual listings of drugs during the seven-day period analysed. MDMA, methamphetamines, and heroin sourced were consistently found to only contain the advertised substance.
CNS stimulants also appear to be popular in the UK and Australia, although their sales rate trends downwards in both countries, so the policy concern ought perhaps to be more muted. This is true even if they only represent a small part of the cryptomarket trade in comparison to other products (see Soska & Christin, 2015). Products such as antidepressants, antiepileptics, antipsychotics and dementia drugs are rarely listed and even more rarely bought from these markets.
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The next most popular drugs, making up about 30 percent of sales, are stimulants like cocaine and amphetamines. Most web users spend their time on the surface web which makes up only a small fraction (an estimated five percent) of the internet. The majority of the internet (an estimated 95 percent) exists within the deep web, unindexed by search engines like Google and Bing. The dark web lives within the deep web, and it requires specific software, configurations and authorization to access.
Australia is a leading country in the darknet drugs trade, with more online drug vendors per capita than any other nation except the Netherlands, according to research presented at this week’s Victorian Alcohol and Drug Association Conference. You do not have to be a big time supplier to get charged under the criminal code for online drug transactions. For example, you can be charged as a drug trafficker for importing as little as 0.5 gram of MDMA or two grams of coke. Just as it is with drug sales on the street, “a drug conviction can have a long term impact on someone’s life, including limiting career prospects and making it difficult to travel overseas. Finally, there is a misconception that you cannot get caught buying and selling illicit drugs off the dark net. Often people who run these websites pose as buyers and sellers in order to steal personal information.
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While the darknet is present globally, Australia has been a key player in the darknet industry. Below is a discussion on the darknet markets in Australia, their reach, how they work, and more. A 22-year-old man was arrested and taken to Fairfield Police Station, where he was charged with 20 offences relating to the supply of prohibited drugs. A 25-year-old man was arrested at the scene and taken to Campsie Police Station, where he was charged with 98 offences relating to the supply of prohibited drugs. Launched in 2023, STYX focuses on financial crime, providing stolen credit card data, hacked bank accounts and access to various cryptocurrency laundering tools. Some markets are invite-only or have strict registration rules to keep out scammers and law enforcement.
The marketplace is well-known for its bug bounty programs and robust security mechanisms, including mandatory 2FA. To wrap their heads around these contradictory results, the authors developed substance-specific explanations for how “the dynamics of the cryptomarket” might influence drug composition. For example, the ample in-person supply of MDMA in the Netherlands may drive the differences observed between cryptomarket and offline sources.
“Australia’s resistance to opening more drug checking facilities stems from an assumption that drug checking ‘green lights’ drug use,” Barratt said. While 65% of samples contained only the advertised substance, the study found 14% of samples had a mixture of the advertised substance with other psychoactive or potentially harmful chemicals. Scientists particularly noted the inconsistency in cocaine samples; out of 19 tested, only four were found to be pure cocaine. The remainder were either adulterated with other substances or did not contain cocaine at all. “There are fewer sellers selling big amounts and many sellers selling small amounts and it is in such small amounts, it makes it easy to move.
