Measuring Darknet Markets

Master thesis (2019)

Authors

B.P.J. Stinenbosch Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Contributors

P.H. Hartel Cyber Security - EEMCS (supervisor 1)
M.J.G. van Eeten Organisation & Governance - TPM (supervisor 2)
R.S. van Wegberg Organisation & Governance - TPM (coach)
Faculty
Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
Copyright: © 2019 Bas Stinenbosch
Market Cryptomarket Darknet Measuring Proxies Validating
More Info
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Published Date

21-08-2019

Language

English

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Faculty

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Abstract

Background: A lot of scientists have tried to shed light on dark web markets. They did this by scraping these marketplaces over a period of time and describe what they were seeing. However, the methods used to measure these markets were never validated before. Research goal: This research will identify and validate the methods that are used in the literature to measure darknet marketplaces. Methods: To validate these methods, a novel dataset is used, namely the confiscated backend of a market. This dataset is cleaned and used to analyze the accuracy of these proxies on. Results: It is found that the number of transactions, revenue, and market share can be estimated with a high amount of explained variance. The predictions are precise enough to find prominent vendors on the market. The designed method of calculating the illegally obtained profits of a darknet vendor is easy to understand and could be used by law enforcement agencies. Finally, it is found that some vendors register to a market early as a strategy to ensure their business continuity.