Law enforcement in the country announced that they are now going after users of Flugsvamp 2.0 and have since the takedown two years back arrested 14 suspects. Police in Sweden back in 2018 facilitated the takedown of one of the most prolific darkweb marketplaces in the country. The market, which had some 17,600 users was mostly used as a conduit to trade in goods and services that users would rather have anonymity dealing in; that is not to say that all transactions occurring on the marketplace named Flugsvamp 2.0 were criminal in nature.

February 12th, the Police declared that while they had now rendered the website obsolete, posting a banner on the website to inform new users of the takedown further information shared stipulated that law enforcement had found a way to decipher the identities of the 600 vendors and 17,000 users of the site and were following up with an investigation to ensure that arrests would be made in the cases of the commission of crime.

The investigation, which was dubbed “Operation Incognito 2” was not limited to the takedown of the site, but also to achieve something rarely done over the dark web – strip completely the anonymity these platforms provide and go after its users. So far, authorities maintain that they have been able to arrest 14 individuals suspected to have engaged in money laundering and drug trafficking offenses using the site, including the administrator back in September of 2018.

There’s no explaining the rationale behind law enforcement targeting users on the platforms who could be going down for as little as purchasing weed on the dark web, and it is even more difficult to explain how they claim to be able to gain privileged access to deanonymize users of the darkweb website.

In response to this, Detective Inspector with the National Cybercrime Centre, Björn Eriksson shared this and cautioned:

“Many people think that darknet is a hidden part of the internet where crimes can be committed anonymously and with impunity. They are completely wrong. We have developed our capabilities, and you cannot feel secure on hidden sites even when the criminal schemes are very advanced.”