TheRealDeal
Type of site
Darknet market
Available inEnglish
URLtrdealmgn4uvm42g.onion (defunct)[1]
CommercialYes
RegistrationRequired
Current statusOffline

TheRealDeal was a darknet website and a part of the cyber-arms industry reported to be selling code and zero-day software exploits.[2]

The creators claimed in an interview with DeepDotWeb that the site was founded in direct response to the number of dark websites which have emerged during the past few years which do not actually have anything of value to sell and are just scams.[3] The site relied on Tor and bitcoin similar to other darknet markets but required multi-signature transactions. There was speculation in the computer security community as to whether the site is a law enforcement sting operation due to apparent listing of exploits at many times below their potential market value.[4]

In July 2015 the website was down for 24 hours at the same time as cyber crime forum Darkode was seized by the FBI and various members arrested in 'Operation Shrouded Horizon'.[5] On 13 August in 2015 the site went offline for unknown reasons.[6][7] On December 1 it announced its reopening on DeepDotWeb.[8] The Real Deal was shut down in November 2016.[9]

In 2020, cybersecurity author Vinny Troia provided an analysis of the marketplace's MySQL database, which revealed two of the site's three admins to be members of The Dark Overlord hacking group.[10]

See also

References

  1. ^ "TheRealDeal Market". Archived from the original on 30 May 2016. Retrieved 30 May 2016.
  2. ^ DeepDotWeb (8 April 2015). "Not Only Drugs: New Market Focuses On Code, 0Days & Exploits". Archived from the original on 18 May 2015. Retrieved 15 May 2015.
  3. ^ Winder, Davey (21 Apr 2015). "Is this new zero-day dark market the real deal?". Retrieved 17 May 2015.
  4. ^ "Is this new zero-day dark market the real deal?". IT PRO. 21 April 2015. Retrieved 2022-04-23.
  5. ^ Cox, Joseph (29 July 2015). "The Mysterious Disappearance, and Reappearance, of a Dark Web Hacker Market". Retrieved 31 July 2015.
  6. ^ "Dead Markets". Archived from the original on 12 August 2015. Retrieved 13 September 2015.
  7. ^ "DarkNet Stats". Archived from the original on 8 December 2015. Retrieved 13 September 2015.
  8. ^ "TheRealDeal: This Long-Dead Market Was Just Relaunched!". DeepDotWeb. 1 December 2015. Archived from the original on 8 December 2015. Retrieved 3 December 2015.
  9. ^ http://www.itnewsafrica.com/2017/08/cybercrime-finds-a-way-despite-dark-web-shutdowns/ archive
  10. ^ Troia, Vinny (January 2020). Hunting Cyber Criminals. Wiley. pp. 440–443. ISBN 978-1-119-54099-1. Retrieved 23 December 2020.

External links


Tor onion services
Categories