State of the darkmarkets: Pandora compromised?

One of the members of Onionland recently created a searchable version of the original Silk Road forums.  As you do, I went on a little trip down memory lane.

In August 2012 in response to the thread ‘Think Silk Road will be around for a while’ I wrote:

I think that no matter what happens to Silk Road, it will go down in history as a turning point for a rethink of drug policy in the western world.  Now that it has been proven to be such a viable business model, even if it is somehow shut down, clones will pop up in its place within weeks.

This seems to have come true to a certain extent. The Digital Citizens Alliance, which keeps tabs on such things, reported this week that there are just under 47,000 listings for drugs across the darknet markets – well over double that were around before the original Silk Road was taken over. And for the first time ever, Silk Road looks like it about to be edged out as the dark market leader. Silk Road’s 12,350 drug listings barely beats the second placegetter’s 12,053, and in overall listings Silk Road has fallen out of first place.

That honour now goes to Agora, with a total of 16,137 listings, compared to Silk Road’s total of 15,952. The darknet markets appear to be booming.

Not all is smooth sailing though. Number four on the list, Pandora, has reportedly been compromised. Yesterday, popular vendor DutchDeal wrote on the Silk Road forums:

Our Pandora vendor account “Dutchdeal” is compromised today 3th of September.

We cant login see orders etc. So dont place any order there on the whole site!

Other vendors have the same problem! The buyers account can loggin, so you can take your conclusion.

Since then, the reports are that all vendor accounts on Pandora have been hijacked. Buyers can still deposit and place orders, but the sellers are unable to log in at all. The forums are also unavailable.

Pandora’s customers remain hopeful that this is simply a glitch. We should know soon.