Agora Market, one among the largest online black markets, is going offline to tackle major security breaches that seem to have occurred. This move was taken by the site because of security concerns that its servers would be tracked down owing to the “suspicious activity”that was detected.
Security Concerns
With more than 20,000 product listings, which include everything from drugs, contraband, and counterfeits, and sales of over $150,000 a day, the temporary shutdown of Agora Market showsa major blow to the darknet world. In the context that a major portion of the market was taken over by Agora Market after Evolution went offline lastMarch, members of various forums of the darknet applauded the site’s move to temporarilyshut down rather than abscond with the customers’ money. It is also predicted that many customers will be absorbed by Agora’s competitors such as AlphaBay, Nucleus, etc.
Agora Market - Admin Clarifications
At this juncture, the admin of Agora Marketsaid that the shutdown was temporary and was being taken in the wake of research that had submitted reports citing the vulnerabilities of the Tor network. The gaps that were recently found in the Tor protocol meant that servers as well as their operators could be tracked down and identified. Agora Market is the largest darknet marketplace on the dark web by virtue of its sales volume of both legal as well as illicit items. The payments for transactions of this website are made using bitcoins.
When customers voiced their concerns about the site being taken down suddenly, and whether the story would turn out to be like that the Evolutionmarketplace, the anonymous administrators of the site offered an explanation that the move is only a temporary consequence of the security matter. They also encouraged the customers to withdraw remaining funds if any from their accounts at the earliest possible instance. The payouts to the users may be delayed, they added, in view of the large-scale withdrawals that were expected to be made in the wake of the announcement.
The customers were asked to refrain from making any bitcoin payments to Agora Market during the time when its servers were offline. The website has volunteered to clear all outstanding orders from customers. For the vendors, they have been asked to cancel all the orders that remained “not serviced” or sent out as yet. The admin added that they would manage the situation using vendor bonds within a short period of time. During the times that the website would be offline, the website’s operators added that all of the user’s data will be kept intact and secure and would be used on return. All these are indicative of the fact that they are not running away with their customers’ money during the period when their website is down.
To read more about Agora Market, visit here http://www.agoradrugs.com/.
