AlphaBay was the largest online drug and crime bazaar in history, run by an elusive mastermind who seemed untouchable. Now the world-shifting story of how a dark web goliath fell to a scrappy group of detectives is finally being told.
🎨: @hogingkim wired.com/story/alphabay… 1/8
Alexandre Cazes lived what the Thai people called the “chill-chill” life: He only left the house for dinner with his wife, errands, and privately, prolific womanizing.
But he had another secret: He was also the kingpin behind the biggest dark web black market of all time. 2/8
While real-life Cazes zoomed through the streets at triple-digit speeds in his Lamborghini, his online persona was Alpha02— the anonymous founder of the dark web black market AlphaBay that made the infamous Silk Road pale in comparison. 3/8
Cazes believed, as many did before him, that crypto’s anonymity paired with genius technological ability would protect him—but just as crypto had opened up new markets for criminals, so had it opened up new opportunities for law enforcement. 4/8
AlphaBay’s security seemed impenetrable—until a small team from a dusty central California city received a fortuitous tip: Years ago, a quickly-fixed server misconfiguration had briefly exposed the sender of the AlphaBay welcome email: Pimp_alex_91@hotmail.com 5/8
The team used that email to dig through piles of social media and internet history—mostly finding Cazes numbingly unsuspecting. But one Internet Archive dig turned up something interesting: a deleted profile that showed he had written on a forum under another name: Alpha02. 6/8
The team knew from previous cases the tall order ahead: They would need dead-to-rights evidence and access to his laptop—while he was using it. But simultaneously, a still more daring bust was in progress: one that would change their trajectory and the dark web forever. 7/8
Read the first installment of Andy Greenberg’s unbelievable tale of the biggest dark web bust of all time, and sign up for our newsletter to receive the next five parts of the series weekly. wired.com/story/alphabay… 8/8
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NEWS: A software update from cybersecurity company Crowdstrike appears to have inadvertently disrupted Microsoft IT systems globally. wired.trib.al/cvUpRaS
Banks, airports, TV stations, hotels, and countless other businesses are all facing widespread IT outages, leaving flights grounded and causing widespread disruption, after Windows machines have displayed errors worldwide. wired.com/story/microsof…
In the early hours of Friday, companies in Australia running Microsoft’s Windows operating system started reporting devices showing Blue Screens of Death (BSODs). wired.com/story/microsof…
NEW: J.D. Vance, a Republican US senator and Trump’s running mate left his Venmo account public, exposing his list of “friends,” from fellow Yale Law grads to tech executives—precisely the elites he rallies against. wired.com/story/jd-vance…
WIRED found that more than 200 people appear on Vance’s Venmo “friends” list. This includes Amalia Halikias, a director at the Heritage Foundation—the force behind Project 2025.
Vance’s Venmo friend’s list also includes media personalities like Bari Weiss and Tucker Carlson, as well as tech executives from Anthropic and AOL. wired.com/story/jd-vance…
SCOOP: Arab and Muslim workers at Meta allege that its response to the crisis in Gaza is one-sided and out of hand. “It makes me sick that I work for this company,” says one employee.
But when a club for Muslim workers revealed plans to spend $200 in company funds to serve nine dozen cupcakes in watermelon colors at the event, Meta management called the offering disruptive.
Bellingcat is the world’s biggest citizen-run intelligence agency, investigating everything from the 2014 shoot-down of MH17 to the various plots to kill Russian dissident Alexei Navalny. The person behind it all? Eliot Higgins. wired.com/story/how-to-l…
Bellingcat’s trajectory tells a scathing story about the nature of truth in the 21st century. Hard facts have been devalued. Online, everyone can present, and believe in, their own narratives, even if they’re mere tissues of lies. wired.com/story/how-to-l…
The year ahead may be the biggest of @bellingcat's life. In addition to tracking conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, its analysts will also be flooded with falsified artifacts from elections in the US, the UK, India, and dozens of other countries. wired.com/story/how-to-l…
Even before Sam Bankman-Fried, Faruk Fatih Özer had built a crypto empire. Now, the 27-year-old is facing a prison sentence of 11,196 years.
Did he almost get away with the biggest heist in Turkey’s history, or was it a misunderstanding? WIRED deep dive: wired.trib.al/wMvxpYp
Following decades of political turmoil in Turkey, at 23, Özer founded a crypto exchange called Thodex by investing just 40,000 lira ($11,100 US). He advertised his company as a way to prevent economic volatility, using a playbook from Silicon Valley. wired.com/story/faruk-oz…
In a few years, thousands of people bought in. Thodex expanded, reaching the upper echelons of society and government. By March 2021, Turkey became one of the top five nations for crypto use and Özer’s company was booming. wired.com/story/faruk-oz…