Following the release of our last Dark Web report earlier this year, there have been some significant changes in the Dark Web landscape.
The main change has been the closure of White House Market (WHM) (the largest Dark Web market) as well as the exit scam of a number of smaller markets. This has affected the analysis, which has led to the creation of new categories that do not exactly match up with previous reports.
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Key points and developments:
- There were roughly 24,147 adverts for fraud-related items available in November 2021 across the three main fraud markets. This is significantly higher than the usual 13,000 adverts in February 2021. Much of this increase may be due to adverts being duplicated across multiple sites, as sellers seek to spread their products now that WHM has closed.
- WHM’s closure was not an exit scam, and they have allowed users some time to finalise deals.
- The two main markets identified for selling fraud items were ‘Torrez’ and ‘Dark0de’. A number of smaller markets made up the rest of the market share, with ASAP Market being a main contender.
- Dark0de has a much larger number of credit cards for sale, which skews the figures significantly. Many of these are duplicates or low-quality adverts, but it still demonstrates a strong growth in compromised credit cards.
- There has been a significant increase in high quality ID cards for sale, but at much higher prices than seen before.
- Compromised credit cards make up for the most advertised fraudulent item, with roughly 14,052 adverts. This is then followed by compromised accounts (7,385 adverts) and finally stolen personal information/Fullz (2,142 adverts)
Nov ’21 – Average Price Across Markets
| Item | Avg. price | Change |
| Credit cards | £20 | +£1 |
| Fraud Tutorials | £9 | -£4 |
| Fullz | £17 | -£1 |
| Digital ID | £26 | N/A |
| Physical ID | £337 | N/A |
Nov ’21 – Item cost by quarter
The cost of most items has stayed relatively similar, with a continued downward trend in fraud tutorials, yet PII/Fullz staying roughly the same.
Nov ’21 – Advert by type
As with the other charts, the rise in compromised cards for sale on Dark0de has skewed the figures slightly. Compromised accounts are still the prominent item for sale across all the markets, followed by PII/Fullz and Tutorials.
Feb ’21 – Advert types by marketplace
As displayed above, compromised accounts make up a large proportion of adverts on ASAP and Torrez, however Fraudulent cards is the dominant advert type on Dark0de.
Examples – Dark Web Market Adverts November 2021
Photoshop ID templates are still popular, with many different countries and designs available.
There has also been a rise in fraudulent Covid passports and vaccination documentations. Most of these products are targeting the UK or Ireland.
Fake driving licences have also been on the rise. Previously, the majority of fake licences on offer were of poor quality and low cost, however recent months have seen higher quality offerings available for a much higher price.
As always, Credit Card offerings are popular. Deals like the one listed above are common, with many sellers also offering refunds and replacements for non-working cards.
Learn More
Peter Darby Associates (PDA) is a specialist counter fraud training and consultancy company founded by Peter Darby. With a huge variety of courses available, we offer specialist online training in Investigating Fraud on the Dark Web, Digital Document Forensics and Open-Source Intelligence as well as a number of blended and classroom taught Counter Fraud Courses, including our Accredited Counter Fraud Specialist Programmes.
Find out more at Counter Fraud Training | Fraud Investigation Courses (pdacounterfraud.co.uk)