EMPIRE MARKET EXIT SCAM – WHAT’S THE ALTERNATIVE?
UPDATE: – 8/25/2020 – STATUS: EMPIRE MARKET EXIT SCAM
UPDATE: – 8/24/2020 – EMPIRE MARKET IS OFFLINE FOR MORE THAN 3 DAYS NOW. There has been no updates from admin team in the last 24 hours. At this moment we can assume that Empire EXIT-SCAMMED.
For those of you who are asking what now? dutchanonstore.to is currently the largest and most easy to use shop that has been formed by ex Dream and Empire Market vendors in order to avoid scams and do direct deals with customers. It has been formed by most trusted vendors out there offering any kind of drugs.
UPDATE – 8/24/2020: Empire Market has been offline for 3 days now. No more updates from their staff members. At this moment we can say that there is a small chance of Empire Market coming back.
Empire Market is down for more than 2 days now, and this time it’s not the DDoS who took the Empire completely offline, rather the admins took the website off, to, according to their moderator Melbourne overcome an on-going DDoS attack against the market.
All Empire links are down as of now, including private vendor links. But what we know so far? Around 6 days ago a huge DDoS attack that targeted Empire started and lasted for days blocking any legitimate traffic. Apparently attackers cracked the Dread’s EndGame Captcha system that was programmed to slow-down or stop DDoS attacks against onion sites.
What started as a usual DDoS attack (EM was attacked a few months ago in the same way) ended with Empire Market admins taking their website with forum completely offline without saying much.
On August 5, researcher from RiskIQ a leader in attack surface management Yonathan Klijnsma posted on on Twitter about Empire Market being misconfigured allowing anyone to see their real IP address. Although this has not yet been confirmed a lot of posts on Dread, a reddit-like darknet forum pointed out that this is actually a phishing Empire link.
Empire moderator Melbourne posted on Dread 2 days ago a PGP-signed message saying:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 Hello Empire. Our team is working tirelessly to overcome an ongoing DDOS attack against our market. An attack on us is really an attack on you, our community. We do not take this lightly. We are the #1 market and it is your trust that has allowed us to get here. Trust is earned over time. When dozens of admins were scamming in 2018 and 2019, we were the only market to stay loyal to you. This is who we are. Our character has not changed. Many want to see us fall but we are not going anywhere. Long live the Empire. Melbourne, in the memory of Alexandre Cazes. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIzBAEBCAAdFiEEcsvedp/hS3WRXCs0BQks8dr01GEFAl9AW1QACgkQBQks8dr0 1GHIlw/+P0wV+tm2YIXRLSWcGNpUQcmV9/oB1X04J1NKJvZoRWWmUnjEoO5TNnmo TO18ivTnhQtRL//lhgwlYV/9+4TMSYx6r3UX94ja9/xdh3kvYfmqp+4eYlqdBVpS H/YERTQsqM5F695n90QCvdSm7PQpE246tRNzq+gBaSmbEi6NLpCRxW4r5nEHgH3L rxtmdLgeHq8A/H2wS1C6IDu1G5gnFbgZ1RWAAy1I4HRQ5iaLN1TzYYC8URDr1uHQ uFBkdl7OEKgrRCAPwRsQ/VeRSNt9pa9JTABg+aKvKLY4yZaiWMOzt5MWwQDSVC/I 5BhMMUkWKwGkklKQ2IbJ1eHJ0VQ9Z03/nDUgPcF4vo6lC+5iu9TzeK7lNyTLNrdr x9kI9JIKlwtRoqN/t2pXcgpLBtv/uxFAwu/4L7C1vu0Qy3/8Zz0x+89p4znGV1uC 8eq55zlQibXNDhAdFzUgB/H3oCb0B9Nw1rE+v53LKT1kleC4WMg1+A+Vr2tvs4Ls j+oIsOemzQsZTtFjssCgZ7ksUeNJ/gYLHalp98JMc4F8tD0k/h8HSDOVgZehWRG4 geiwIW36txObCvsSCGNYl00eaN+ZxQeeh/GlrqUtLyvEp4Gl5hVRjvyU/MX/7JU1 KoAF5X4r6o7rlHnW1AqoMo4RsvkTnyibkH7M4dr2MHBaLyeyLXA= =3/J/ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
It followed with another PGP-signed message 7 hours ago, adding:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 Beware the many false narratives and FUD circulating. We are here and are hard at work. Doing anything safely takes time. Melbourne 23 Aug 2020 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIzBAEBCAAdFiEEcsvedp/hS3WRXCs0BQks8dr01GEFAl9ClQgACgkQBQks8dr0 1GELpBAAnInb9NgK6nztNbPWJP+c8wrHKKeWYWZvmiInt6uRz3Z+ZTqldMrMnBSS kMF8YallkD6p4QqhTlvdbR7B3ZkccWykrKAsKXR/DUFRP9kGsa5x6OSrW1iL6uDY uud4cn4cRB7UMH1qHOYpaH+vk/lKd13XMGsOv8HIApuDhMDwZi9yRGAoDphFVUe+ 6HHOMEmHEMp3kj+mLwTsmc4kb9V6PNmkv4LXCJNdDa4C2OpGudt5nzQK4MDaYE+h A8A/sKWimphAj1SClF9u3UfNaHZrvsmQfrbBvlkC6os8jgIymzxmrVypSjz2/+CQ EaiESTjqccygD7c3FFWvB0bMwu6ub5rGIo0T8VmOqthipSqkUBZ/zWxvZFzi7MBJ E9PaBVqkC5NB8f+mtql8TglTgeirToceAPn572SNGAnw8DCeWIKFHfC0I8BXbew7 fm/+Y7Pv+q3pV2WgMQZXLqALPO7CDfdRVbD2doK0nn3q+yKHRKh9uNvQdeZ3D2A7 O9w9XKvwSiCKBm8NDj3RWfqjerB5AY9xU9jAiRavgVNjjR8VVaE5WFWyGu7EIgVg oSmnLf1KY3w5m7u32+VFGpjjXZjwdNMFQzjuVECPvyx2777aWoFAY5aaYbpGrO94 xGlXjmCXWO8jWIEXD1l0wcM+W3N+PTvUYtL32KqF5U1ZHigDi5Q= =XqzD -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
In the meantime Empire is still down without many updates from their admins letting buyers and vendors in dark. What to do next? While waiting for Empire to come back check out our – Top Darknet Markets.
UPDATE: Se7en, one of the main market staff members responded on reddit-like Darknet Forum Dread, saying:
“If the market is still down in a couple of days i’ll make a post about the whole situation then, it’s early days and maybe the admins will bring it back. I can only speak directly for the forum which was initially taken down by DDoS, but i have taken it down now unless the market returns.”
Is this a bad sign? Only time will tell. We urge anyone to not trust ANYONE on the darknet anymore. No matter what was the cause of this downtime, you can’t just take someones’s hard-earned money without any explanation. Even if Empire Market comes back do not treat them like before. We as a community already had situations like this with Wall Street Market and many more before them.
We really hope that we are wrong on this one, but this isn’t promising at all.
Stay safe until next read!
Link to Dread Post where Se7en responded to one of the users asking about Empire status -http://dreadytofatroptsdj6io7l3xptbet6onoyno2yv7jicoxknyazubrad.onion/post/18b8c126cd212827d1d1
Verify ALL LINKS before visiting them!
Dark.Fail twit about Se7en respond on current Empire situation can be found here – https://twitter.com/DarkDotFail/status/1297731843555356673