Tag: pornography

Mr Dark's Depraved Rape and Child Porn Site Brought Down by Blockchain Analysis

A Dutch national has been indicted by a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia for operating a depraved and violent pornography site featuring minors and sexual assault. Michael Rahim Mohammed, known as Mr Dark, allegedly profited around $1.6 million which was paid in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

The ‘Dark Scandals’ website hosted thousands of videos and images that were promoted as being “real” acts of sexual violence including blackmail and rape. The site operated on both the darknet and the clearnet since 2012.

Cryptocurrency Payments

According to the announcement by U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the illegal content was distributed to clients via downloadable email packs. Users could either pay with Bitcoin or Ethereum, or they could add their own content to the site’s library.

Mohammed was the administrator of the site and received 188 Bitcoin and 27 Ether among the 1650 deposits made to Dark Scandals. He also set very specific rules prohibiting “fake” or simulated violence insisting that the content be “real rape” and preferably homemade.

“The obscene material distributed by Michael Rahim Mohammed victimizes innocent and vulnerable people in our communities,” said Alysa Erichs, acting executive associate director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations. “We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to investigate and prosecute these crimes, using all available resources to ensure that additional vulnerable victims aren’t exploited.”

Cryptocurrency was the sites main source of financial support, however,the blockchain’s supporting the transactions recorded all the payment details of the crime which allowed law enforcement agencies to track them.

303 Bitcoin and Ethereum accounts that paid cryptocurrency to the site using Chainalysis transaction tracing software were tracked by a combination of agencies. A forfeiture complaint seeks to recover the funds and offer them to the victims.

Blockchain Analysis

The forfeiture complaint notes that many of the cryptocurrency accounts tracked had incomplete KYC verification and had only been used for one transaction.

A thorough blockchain analysis of the accounts revealed further illicit transactions. From the complaint, “Law enforcement observed numerous payments from these accounts to other darknet markets, which were flagged by blockchain analytics companies, enabling law enforcement to identify illicit transactions.”

Michael Rahim Mohammed has been officially charged with the crimes of distribution and production of child pornography, engaging in the selling and transferring of obscene material, and laundering of monetary instruments.

Trustless Not Anonymous

When the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), issued new guidelines on how digital assets should be regulated last June, there was a lot of pushback from the crypto community and exchanges regarding the need for know you customer (KYC) compliance with many highlighting that cryptocurrency privacy was over.In an interview with Blockchain.News, Matthew Unger, CEO of IComply investor services addressed the concerns on privacy saying,”While we want to be free, money has a direct impact on people’s lives. The reality is that crypto is often used in the child sex trade, to launder massive amounts of money, and to undermine the free democratic process in favor of corruption and foreign influence, such as was the case in the 2016 U.S. election (re: the Mueller report). We’ve seen even more extreme values on privacy in the last few years. While some people say privacy is more important, these people limit the current and potential uses of crypto in the financial system.”

According to Unger, many are missing the point of cryptocurrency as he says, “The original objective of this technology is not to be anonymous—it’s to be trustless. You don’t need to know anything about an individual to know that you can trade with them and that their money is real. What the tech can’t do is tell you if the crypto is stolen, was used to harm someone, or was used to facilitate acts of terrorism, crime, or other illicit or harmful activities. In order to use crypto in good conscience, it’s prudent that users deal with people that they have vetted.”

Image via Shutterstock

Analyst Honored for Exposing South Korean Dark Web Crypto Child Pornography and Blackmail Site

Criminal analyst, Kim Reece, has been named as a finalist for the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal for her role in the takedown of the South Korean ‘Nth Room’ child pornography chat rooms that hosted the vile content of the ‘Welcome to Video’ dark web site.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Criminal Analyst, Kim Reece was named as a finalist for the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal.

According to the announcement on May 27, Reece’s blockchain analysis led to an international criminal investigation of the largest dark web child pornography sites—’Welcome to Video’ that leveraged cryptocurrency to cloak their payments on over one million video downloads.

Working alongside cross-agency partners Christopher M. Janczewski, IRS- Criminal Investigations, and Zia M. Faruqui of the US Department of Justice (DOJ), Reece’s contribution led to the arrests of the site’s operator, Jong Woo, and more than 300 users, as well as the rescue of 25 exploited children.

250,000 Child Porn Videos

The sexual exploitation of underage school-going girls in South Korea has been happening for years on the “Nth Rooms” dark web site. Notably, they would be filmed undertaking violent self-harm and sexual acts, and the videos taken were made available via Telegram chat rooms after members made crypto payments.

It is reported that at least 10,000 people utilized these chatrooms after paying fees ranging from $200 to $1,200 in Bitcoin, with trades completed through a separate protected forum.

According to the law enforcement agencies who spearheaded the investigation, the amount of child sexual pornography content seized was close to 8 TB or more than 250,000 videos.

Let’s Rape

According to the indictment, on March 5, 2018, agents from HSI, IRS-CI, the National Crime Agency in the United Kingdom, and the National Police in South Korea arrested Jong Woo Son, 23, a South Korean national. The authorities also seized the servers he used to operate a darknet market place exclusively advertising child sexual exploitation videos available for download by site members.

The dark web site was called Welcome to Video: the ‘nth rooms’ refers to a series of Telegram chat rooms where users would illegally produce and trade sexually exploitative footage of women and children. The core of the business was to turn real-life assaults into online content, with the site itself boasting over one million downloads.

As the business grew from 2018 to 2019, the Telegram chat rooms became more bespoke for its depraved clientele. The users could have their pick of the “slave room” or perhaps the “violate your acquaintance room” and a variety of rooms dedicated exclusively to child rape and sexual abuse.

In the chat rooms where underage girls were degraded, forced to behave like animals and violated in public unsanitary areas, it was common for the users to greet each with the phrase, “let’s rape.” Victims were often manipulated into giving out personal information that could be used to blackmail them into obeying the commands of the chat users.

Kim Reece Honored and Recognized

Analysis of the platform revealed that it generated close to one million BTC addresses.ICE HSI Criminal Analyst Kim Reece – Image Via ICE.Gov

“It is a great honor and privilege to recognize Kim Reece for her nomination for the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal,” said Deputy Director and Senior Official Performing the Duties of Director, Matthew T. Albence. “Even more important than this prestigious acknowledgment, however, is her continued dedication and use of her expertise to protect exploited children. The efforts of Ms. Reece and her interagency partners were instrumental to the takedown of this international criminal organization.”

At the end of the announcement, Homeland Security noted some hotlines and encouraged members of the public to report any suspected child predators or exploitation. The 24 hr toll-free hotlines are 1-866-347-2423 and TTY for hearing impaired at (802) 872-6196. 

Image via Shutterstock

TOR Network Vulnerability May Have Facilitated Dark Web Bitcoin Theft

According to a cybersecurity researcher, Bitcoin thieves and hackers have controlled more exit relays on the Tor network this year than in the past five, raising serious cybersecurity concerns that experts are looking to fix.  

What is Tor Network? 

Tor network is a routing system that aims at protecting users’ online anonymity and online activity by bouncing a user’s traffic through a network of relays. This system makes it extremely difficult to track a user’s identity. Though the Tor network provides multiple security functions and anonymity for companies and individuals, it has also been used for illicit purposes by Bitcoin scam artists.  

Hackers More Active on Tor Than Ever Before

With the research brought up by cybersecurity researcher operating under the handle nusenu, data shows that in 2020, Bitcoin (BTC) scammers and crypto hackers operating on the Tor network have managed to control 24% of exit relays – the final step before a user’s search query pops up and presents the search request in question. By exerting control over these exit relays, cybercriminals are able to remove encryption protocols on websites, consequently leading to web users’ data being unprotected and up for scam artists to access and manipulate as they wish. Nusenu indicated that the majority of the time, stolen information is used by fraudsters to steal Bitcoin funds.

To further explain how cryptocurrency-driven criminals operated, nusenu referenced past cases of Bitcoin theft and said: 

“They replaced Bitcoin addresses in HTTP traffic to redirect transactions to their wallets instead of the user-provided Bitcoin address.” 

Since the report, hackers’ miscellaneous activities have been tracked and taken down. However, it appears that attackers still control more than 10% of exit relay nodes, which is a cause for concern for cybersecurity officials.  

With Bitcoin and Ether, these cryptocurrencies can sometimes be untraceable to more than one random wallet address, which in turn incites hackers to employ these cryptocurrencies to wash out stolen funds.  

Australia Records First Cryptocurrency Theft Charge  

Recently, Australia recorded its first case of cryptocurrency theft charge. An Australian 25-year-old stole more than 100,000 Ripple (XRP) tokens and converted the assets to Bitcoin through an overseas Chinese exchange. The stolen cryptocurrency was then shuffled into different digital wallets to make the stolen assets undetectable by law enforcement.  

Bitcoin Used to Funnel Dark Web Viewings 

As Bitcoin surges in pricing on the market, it is a much-desired hedge by many. According to market experts, the digital asset is going to soar even more in pricing. The use of Bitcoin to funnel criminal activities is therefore not uncommon, with BTC’s increased demand and its decentralized feature. 

In July, two Italians minors were detained for instigating child pornography viewings on the dark web in exchange for Bitcoin payments. 

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