The most common uses of websites on the Tor hidden service are criminal, including drugs, illegal finance and pornographic content involving violence, children and animals. However, the dark web has legitimate uses, and it provides users with online privacy.

Researchers at threat intelligence firm Analyst1 recently analyzed the operations of several major cybercrime forums on the Dark Web and found that at least two of them have informal court systems where criminals can file complaints and resolve disputes with their peers.

Nym is still in the development stage, and it's hard to say whether this is a real alternative to Tor, as the developers claim - having to buy crypto tokens may be a deterrent for many people who use Tor today.

Currently new v2 domains can no longer be registered on the Tor network and users can only access existing sites using older versions of the Tor browser, but old v2 domains can still be loaded.

Despite the closure of these cracked-down marketplaces, the trading market space on the dark web appears to continue to thrive as users choose to easily flee to other markets that are still accessible.

Analysts at SOS Intelligence searched the dark web for providers of SS7 exploit services and found that the four surviving sites all claim to offer SMS blocking and spoofing, location tracking, and call blocking and redirection services, but without exception they are all scams.

Money launderers, cyber criminals and terrorists find cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Monero, Ripple and Zcash very convenient when transacting on dark networks such as TOR and Freenet because of their anonymity and untraceability.

The dark web ads say that these certificates will be issued in some Western European countries, and they claim to be able to check these certificates in any official application, such as CovPass, CoviCheck, etc.

The most lasting impact of the White House Market may be that it establishes higher industry standards for operational security and customer service among Dark Web marketplaces, making transactions more difficult to track and providing a smoother experience for online Dark Web users.

We expect that the growing number of data breaches and the increased channels available to cybercriminals to monetize leaked data will lead even more to increased interest and activity in data stolen from the dark web.