Last updated at Mon, 30 Oct 2023 19:58:43 GMT
Black Friday and Cyber Monday form the biggest consumer shopping frenzy of the year, as retailers continue to see explosive annual growth on these sales holidays. But while the average consumer is in search of hot deals on electronics, furniture, clothing, and sporting goods, the underground markets on the dark web will be offering more nefarious assets, like admin credentials, personal identifiable information, and drugs.
While some Tor dark web markets have shut down over the last couple of years – most notably Dream, Wall Street, and Deep Dot Web – there is still an abundance of markets selling goods and services to hackers and cybercriminals. With so many markets coming and going, buyers are in need of a way to find the best new sources constantly. IntSights’ research and intelligence team has unearthed a new indexing service that fills this need: Kilos.
Kilos allows buyers to search for products across numerous dark web sites. While this can be done using other services like Torch and TorLinks, having a product specific search engine seems to be a useful tool for potential buyers. The concept itself is not a new idea, as engines such as Grams have been operational in the past with some degree of success.
Kilos and Grams share several similarities that don’t seem coincidental. They are both dark web product searches, they both clearly attempt to mimic the Google aesthetic, and they are both named after weight measurement units. However, this is where the resemblance between the two ends. Kilos has taken the search concept one step further to include forums, in addition to black markets.
Kilos also offers the granular search options that buyers in dark web markets have come to expect, such as price ranges, specific markets, shipping origins and destinations, and currency types. The filtering options highly resemble those that were offered on Dream Market.
Another interesting functionality that Kilos offers is the ability to peruse the most popular search terms. As of last week, the most popular product family searched for, by far, was narcotics. However, it will be interesting to follow this list and see how it changes and evolves over time. Readers will notice several non-drug related searches such as ‘gun’, ‘passport’ and ‘bank drop’ – the latter two alluding to fraud related intentions.
While some of the buying and selling business has moved from Tor to P2P environments like Telegram, there is still a whole lot of traffic and commerce being conducted on the dark web that justifies services like Kilos. As markets tend to have limited life cycles before they are shut down by authorities, Kilos provides dark web shoppers with a more thorough way to discover new sources as they emerge.
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