Important clarifications:
– A great many fraudsters operate on the dark web. It is therefore entirely possible that some of the sites we mention are pure and simple scams.
– This series is not intended to promote dark web sites, nor to give advice on transacting safely on them. Its only purpose is to describe the kinds of goods and services offered for sale within the dark web. For that reason we give no site addresses, and any contact details appearing in the screenshots are blurred.
– As a reminder, acquiring or possessing a weapon is illegal. To find out more: click here.
The dark web is a place where various goods and services can be bought. In this series we have chosen to cover the most common kinds: weapons, narcotics, counterfeits and financial services. A final article will look at rarer goods and urban legends — hitmen and red rooms. Paid child abuse sites will be covered in a separate article.
In this first article of the series we look more specifically at:
- Weapons and the dark web
- Selling poison and venom on the dark web
- Drugs for sale on the dark web
- Selling pharmaceuticals on the dark web
1 – Weapons and the dark web
While we may suspect a significant share of the sites we index of being scams, genuine offers do exist on the dark web. Last September, an individual on a French watchlist was arrested in the Paris region for having ordered an assault rifle from an American dark web site. Clandestine gun shops offer not only handguns but long guns too.
Handguns for sale on the TOR GUNS site
Long guns for sale on the TOR GUNS site
Long guns for sale on the Guns ‘R’ Us site
Some sellers offer other kinds of weaponry:
- grenades;
- rocket launchers;
- and even anti-tank missiles.
That last offer seems barely credible, but the first two could be real and come from a Ukrainian supply chain.
The oldest weapons seller on the dark web still in operation is Black Market Guns, shown in the image opposite.
Note that the weapon photographs carry a watermark, meant to prevent them being copied and reused on deceptive sites.
BMG: an active weapons sales site
The same weapon offered by two different sellers.
We can also see, in some photographs, a sheet of paper stamped BMG, meant to prove the seller genuinely has the product to hand.
That form of proof is not enough to establish whether an offer is real. Users of image editing software, of varying talent, can put their own mark on a weapon photograph taken from a stock library on the standard web.
Wary buyers may then demand more specific proof, as the seller Firearms72 found out (image opposite). One buyer asked, as proof, for a photograph of the weapon for sale with a lighter in place of the traditional sheet of paper. The photograph of the weapon with the lighter is available on the site in question, but there is no way to tell whether it has been retouched.
2 – Selling poison and venom on the dark web
At the crossroads between weapons and drugs, another seller offers a whole range of poisons and venoms. Some of the products on offer, such as polonium or VX, make us very seriously doubt the offer is real.
Home page of a poison and venom sales site
The site’s various poisons
The types of venom for sale
3 – Drugs for sale on the dark web
Unlike the previous site, the many drug sales sites strike us as far more credible. Sellers may offer a single type of product or several.
Site specialising in cannabis
Site offering a wide range of narcotics
4 – Selling pharmaceuticals on the dark web
Other sellers offer narcotics alongside prescription medicines such as Xanax and other psychoactive drugs — the Dr. Feelgood site shown opposite, for instance.
Some sites are outright clandestine pharmacies. Among other things they offer:
- anti-HIV medication;
- weight loss drugs;
- and insomnia treatments.
It is not unusual to see this type of seller offering batches of Covid vaccine doses.
A clandestine dark web pharmacy
Site offering Covid-19 vaccines
Finally, we can mention Athletic Pharma which, as its name suggests, specialises in performance-enhancing drugs.
Site specialising in performance-enhancing drugs
We have detailed here only a very small part of what the dark web offers in weapons, narcotics and pharmaceuticals. While a fairly significant share of these sites is open to doubt, it has to be accepted that the entirely real offerings of certain sellers constitute a serious threat to both security and public health.