| Operation Dark HunTor | |
| Type: | Drug Enforcement |
| Executed By: | Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States |
| Countries Number: | 12 |
| Target: | Dark Markets: Dream, Wallstreet, White House, DeepSea, Berlusconi, Dark Market |
| Objective: | To disrupt opioid trafficking and other illegal activities occurring through the Onion Service "Dark Market" with the goal to hunt down the vendors, buyers, and suppliers who had been hiding on that site and make sure they did not find a new platform |
| Date Executed: | January 2021 |
| Arrested Number: | 151 |
Operation Dark HunTOR was an international law enforcement operation targeting opioid trafficking and other illegal activities on The Onion Router (TOR). The operation, which was conducted across the United States, Australia, and Europe, over a period of 10 months.[1] [2] [3] In addition Europol released a statement that said the operation was composed of a series of separate but complementary actions in Australia, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States, with coordination efforts led by Europol and Eurojust; which greatly expands on the initial number of countries that the US press releases indicated.[4]
The name of the operation is a portmanteau of "hunt" or "hunter" and Tor, an open-source anonymity network that is often used to access the dark web.
According to US court documents a "variety" of methods were used, to corroborate the trafficking of drugs through the USPS mail system. One such method used was "controlled buys" of drugs from the dark market sites and then working to trace the sale back to the source mail box.
While many TOR related multinational coordinated operations have relied on sophisticated technological attacks, malware and hacking on the part of the government, review of these cases have yet to reveal a technological method used to deanonymize any users of the TOR markets.
The methods remain of extreme interest to the civil rights and cyber community as to the methodology that used by the various agencies to identify the location of the server or the users. Without an undercover agent tricking the users into giving up their protected information, or sloppy information management once again on behalf of the perpetrators few methods are available when all that is trafficked is data and not physical objects that must be transported physically and not electronically.
The U.S. Government and other partnering governments has been secretive in their transparency regarding this operation. U.S. law enforcement agencies as do other national agencies have some restrictions on what they are allowed to do outside the nations borders, especially without judicial or legislative approval. Additionally, law enforcement agencies generally require an agreement in the form of a Mutual legal assistance treaty (MLAT) or Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to operate in any specific country other than their own granting special permissions. Any public release, review or audit of the MLATs or MOUs associated with this operation remain unpublished as of 1/2024.