Hyderabad: Activities of criminals using the Deep Web or Darknet are a total mystery to the Telangana police. Even some cyber crime officials are not aware of the potential threat by offenders using the Darknet. Tor, a browser developed by the US Navy, that is used to access the Deep Web, gives total anonymity to the user, cops can never catch the offender by using conventional methods like IP address tracking.
Cyber crime teams of the Cyberabad and Hyderabad commissionerates, and the CID have been exposed to different types of cyber crimes, but the arrest of the Sahu brothers have made them realise how daunting the Deep Web is. There can be several rackets lurking in the Deep Web, delivering drugs like LSD to customers in Hyderabad.
“Only very few officers among us are aware of the Deep Web. We took notice after FBI busted a major Darknet drug market two years ago. We had not come across any cases in our city till the Sahu brothers’ arrest. We have not received any special training to tackle crime on Darknet,” a cyber crime official said.
“We often browse Tor and try to find out if there are Hyderabad or Telangana related activities going on. That is the maximum surveillance we can do,” he added.
Not just drugs, but other highly illegal things like child pornography, firearms, and even assassins are available for hire on the Darknet. Since Tor gives absolute anonymity, users can also utilise it for terrorist activities.
There are Darknet email services that allows people to send and receive emails without revealing their location or identity. The terror operatives can use the email service without ever getting trapped by the police or intelligence services, cyber experts say.
Earlier, when Hyderabad police had busted credit/debit card fraudsters, few offenders had confessed that they had bought the card details online. However, investigations had hit a roadblock when the probe officials could not find the websites. A large mafia is active on the Darknet, selling debit card details. There are also several prolific resources on Darknet to teach users hacking and other illegal online activities.
Special browsers alone can access sly darknet
In October this year, a user named indiamart123 posted a thread on Reddit, one of the largest social networking websites run on user-generated content. His post simply read, “Check out my online shop on abaraxas under the name ‘indiamart’. Currently in stock -LSD. More to follow. Intro offers with full escrow.”
The online shop mentioned in this post was not something normal. Indiamart actually was introducing probably the first ever domestic online drug market in India for customers of metro cities like Hyderabad. Indiamart’s online store cannot be accessed by a normal Internet user, as it can never be located by normal web browser like Chrome or search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
It is hidden in the darkest corner of the Internet – the Deep Web (Darknet). Only users with special browsers like Tor can access it. There are several drug markets like Indiamart’s in Deep Web established in various other countries, and now the drugs shipped from such markets have found their way to Hyderabad.
Drug markets on Darknet are just like Flipkart or Amazon, but are run by international drug cartels. The Sahu Brothers from Nagpur, who were arrested by the city police two days ago, got the drugs shipped from The Netherlands, and had them delivered as medicines through private courier services. Hyderabad and Delhi were their initial targets for distribution of the drugs.
Police would never have caught them if they did not physically came down to Hyderabad to hand over the drugs to their peddlers, as cops can’t track transactions on Darknet, said city police.
“During initial interrogation, the Sahu brothers revealed that the drugs were shipped from The Netherlands. They had earlier gone to Delhi to distribute the drugs, and then came to Hyderabad to hand it over to their peddlers,” said Chand Pasha, inspector from the anti narcotic cell. A major Darknet market, Silk Road, was busted by the FBI in 2013. But dozens of new sites sprang up. Agora, Nucleus, Middle Earth, Abrax, and Alphabay were prominent. Few of them are targeting Indian users. “Sahu brothers used Nucleus to buy drugs,” said an official.
All types of drugs are available on such sites. However, a series of posts by Indiamart in Reddit showed that Indian users, mainly from Hyderabad and Bengaluru, prefer LSD, the same drug recovered from Sahu brothers by the Hyderabad police. Indiamart is now expanding the collection of drugs to compete with foreign competitors and monopolise the Indian drug market. The user posted another thread on Reddit two weeks ago: “Ecstasy in store soon! Watch out for free samples”.
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