Dark Web marketplace Agora has temporarily ceased trading due to a vulnerability in the Tor protocol which could result in the IP addresses of users being exposed.

The site made the announcement Tuesday, noting that they believe they may have a solution to the problem, but it will take some time to implement.

“Recently research had come that shed some light on vulnerabilities in Tor Hidden Services protocol which could help to deanonymize server locations,” a notice from the site reads. “Most of the new and previously known methods do require substantial resources to be executed, but the new research shows that the amount of resources could be much lower than expected, and in our case we do believe we have interested parties who possess such resources.”

Noting that they had detected suspicious activity around their servers which they believed are attacks described in the research, the site noted that  “we have a solution in the works which will require big changes into our software stack which we believe will mitigate such problems, but unfortunately it will take time to implement….at this point, while we don’t have a solution ready it would be unsafe to keep our users using the service, since they would be in jeopardy. Thus, and to our great sadness we have to take the market offline for a while, until we can develop a better solution.”

The site isn’t going offline leaving customers in the middle of transactions stranded, committing to clear all outstanding orders, while advising those who have Bitcoin in their accounts to withdraw it as soon as possible.

Sensible play

It’s strange to be reporting on a Dark Web marketplace ceasing to trade for the well being of their users, versus running with funds from users, or being closed down due to law enforcement raids, as per the various incarnations of Silk Road and other similar sites.

Given the circumstances surrounding the potential for user IP addresses to be exposed, the decision to cease trading temporarily is a sensible one by the person or persons who run Agora, and a refreshing change of pace in terms of Dark Web trading sites actually doing the right thing.

Figures are never certain when it comes to illegal marketplaces but it is believed that Agora is the largest drug marketplace on the Dark Web, so the downtime for the site will also be costly to the operators as well; that said, while not specifically spelled out by the operators in their notice, the very same vulnerability could also be exploited by law enforcement to track down the operators of the site, as well as site users, meaning that realistically the move is also an investment in avoiding arrest and jail time as well.

It’s not clear from reports when Agora my resume trading.

Photo by Images_of_Money