In the market for drugs, guns, explosive chemicals, counterfeit goods?
Look no further than the so-called “dark web,” the marketplace of choice for ISIS, Russian hackers, child pornographers, arms traffickers and the errant drug dabbler — and the bane of international law enforcement for as long as there has been an Internet.
The dark web is not accessible by work-a-day search engines such as Google, and communications and monetary transactions, typically in the digital currency known as bitcoin, are hidden behind encryption software.
That anonymity makes it the place to go for nefarious transactions, such as the advertisements that Italian authorities say kidnappers posted last month offering an abducted British model to the highest bidder.
The most famous dark-web-related takedown was the arrest of Ross Ulbricht, the entrepreneur behind the most well known of the secret online drug markets, Silk Road.