Cryptomarkets increasingly infuse illicit drug trade—study

Richard Frank, Associate Professor, International CyberCrime Research Centre (ICCRC) Director Cryptomarkets-marketplaces on the dark web that can facilitate the sale of illicit goods between vendors and buyers-are proving to be attractive alternatives to traditional in-person drug dealing, according to Simon Fraser university researchers, who say machine learning and tracking markets through web crawlers may help curb the growing trend. According to their research, drug revenues for cryptomarkets and vendors increased by 80 percent from 2013-2021, showing a significant growth in the drug-cryptomarket ecosystem. -Cryptomarkets, which are typically short-lived sites that appear and shut down regularly, can be used as an alternative method to access these products,- says SFU criminology professor Richard Frank, director of the International CyberCrime Research Centre at SFU. Frank is also a panelist on the Council of Canadian Academies- Expert Panel on Public Safety in the Digital Age, which released its report Vulnerable Connections , today. He is also a creator of the Dark Crawler , a tool for collecting and analyzing data from the Internet as well as the dark web, an unindexed, encrypted and anonymous section of the internet accessed using special software and able to obscure details and identities. -With lower prices, contactless transactions, and a large variety of drug products available in varying quantities for the buyer's perusal, it becomes an attractive alternative for the illicit trade.