How to Raise the Risk for Criminals on the Darknet

By Robert Wainwright

Robert Wainwright was appointed Executive Director of Europol in April 2009 and reappointed in 2013. Under his command Europol has also established the new European Counter Terrorism Centre and European Migrant Smuggling Centre, both in 2016. He was formally the Chief of the International Department of the UK Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA). Prior to that he was Director International of the UK National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS), where he was responsible for its international operations and for developing and implementing the UK strategy against facilitated illegal immigration. He also managed the UK’s National Central Bureau for Interpol and its Europol National Unit.

Just as criminals conduct business in the dark allies of cities, they also trade in illicit products such as drugs, guns, and counterfeit documents through online bazaars hidden behind anonymizing technology in a place known as the darknet. Last month, law enforcement agencies led by U.S. and Dutch authorities took down two of the largest known darknet marketplaces, AlphaBay and Hansa Market, with Europol facilitating the international coordinated effort. The Cipher Brief’s Levi Maxey spoke with Robert Wainwright, the Executive Director of Europol, about how the operation to take down AlphaBay and Hansa played out and why international cooperation is so important in disrupting criminal marketplaces online.

The Cipher Brief: What were AlphaBay and Hansa Market, and why are such illicit marketplaces a serious security risk? Are their products primarily for petty criminals, or does this facilitate transnational organized crime and possibly even terrorism?

“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62

Access all of The Cipher Brief’s national security-focused expert insight by becoming a Cipher Brief Subscriber+ Member.

Subscriber+

Categorized as:CyberTagged with:

Related Articles

Search

Close