U.S. and European authorities on Friday announced the seizure of more than 400 secret website addresses and arrests of people in a sweep targeting black markets for drugs and other illegal services. In a joint action, law enforcement and judicial agencies around the globe undertook a joint action against dark markets running as hidden services on Tor network. 16 European countries, alongside counterparts from the United States, brought down several marketplaces as part of a unified international action from Europol’s operational coordination centre in The Hague.

Tor, an acronym for The Onion Router, is a free network designed to anonymise your real Internet Protocol (IP) address by routing your traffic through many servers of the Tor network.

The action aimed to stop the sale, distribution and promotion of illegal items, including weapons and drugs, which were being sold on online 'dark' marketplaces. Operation Onymous, coordinated by Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3), the FBI, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and Eurojust, resulted in 17 arrests of vendors and administrators running these online marketplaces and more than 410 hidden services being taken down. In addition, bitcoins worth approximately USD 1 million, EUR 180 000 euro in cash, drugs, gold and silver were seized. The dark market Silk Road 2.0 was taken down by the FBI and the U.S. ICE HIS, and the operator was arrested.