The second in line to Silk Road and the top dark internet market place since Silk Road shut down has temporarily suspended its services ( if you can put it that way). Agora has recently announced that it will be shutting down for an undisclosed amount of time due to threats against the platform.
During the temporary shutdown, Agora will work on various defense mechanisms to thwart any attacks. The threat of attacks are said to be due to certain vulnerabilities associated with the Tor protocol. The Tor vulnerabilities can potentially lead to identification of servers hosting the websites and the operators behind it.
The decision to shut down agora for the time being was announced by the unknown site admins on the website. They also claim to have moved their servers after detecting some suspicious activity on the platform which may disclose the IP address and other site information. Any eventuality like that may easily set law enforcement official on their tails due to alleged illegal nature of certain trades carried out on the platform.
After the closure of Silk Road followed by the arrest and sentencing of Ross Ulbricht, Agora has become the go to place for drugs, contraband and other stuff of illegal nature on the dark internet. Agora accepts only bitcoin and its daily bitcoin transaction volumes puts it at the top position.
The US Federal agencies and law enforcement agencies from various nations actively involved in fighting dark web sites like Agora. Any compromise in security on Agora or its users’ part may help these agencies to track and monitor transactions happening over the platform. It will not only put the platform’s administrators into trouble but also the customers will have to bear the burnt.
We wonder what will be the alternative dark market until Agora comes back to life