By Damien Gayle
- Illicit online bazaar breaks cover with YouTube clip advert
- Like Silk Road, Atlantis is accessible through the Tor 'darknet'
- Transactions processed using online crypto-currencies
A brazen new online black market where users can buy drugs, forgeries and hacking services has broken cover to advertise itself in a YouTube clip.
Looking like an advert for a well-funded Silicon Valley start-up, the slick promo video for Atlantis boasts that it is 'the world's best anonymous online drug marketplace'
It comes as the site's backers announced the launch of a 'big social media campaign' that seems intended to make a play for the market share of the better-known Silk Road.
The products categories listed on Atlantis, which include drugs, drug paraphernalia, forgeries and money, leave little doubt that laws are being broken.
Some of the products on sale include ecstasy pills, MDMA crystals, speed, cannabis, LSD, heroin and a range of designer compounds, all available for mail order as if they were bought on Amazon.
Elsewhere services including Facebook account hacking and free access to Netflix, as well as tools that might be useful to criminals, are on offer.
Users pay using the anonymous online currency Bitcoin, or its new competitor Litecoin, heavily encrypted payment services which disguise the parties in transactions.
In an illicit online world that has hitherto been dominated by one site - Silk Road - Atlantis's decision to advertise may be a desperate move to take a bigger grab of existing market share.
Silk Road, in operation since 2011, remains by far the biggest illicit internet bazaar, with one researcher estimating that it attracts 60,000 unique visitors a day and a recent study estimating annual sales worth $22million (£14.5million), Forbes reported.
Like Silk Road, Atlantis is only accessible through the Tor network, an anonymising service which purports to foil attempts to track internet users' online activities.
Tor, whose name is short for The Onion Router, bounces web traffic around a worldwide network of nodes - dubbed onion routes - adding layers of encryption to make users untraceable.
The system works both ways, and while users can use Tor to anonymously browse mainstream websites, they can also exploit it to anonymous post websites without revealing their physical location.
This anonymity has allowed for an explosion of criminality online, with users swapping child porn, selling drugs or advertising illegal services - earning it the nickname of the 'dark net'.
Silk Road, despite a string of newspaper exposes in recent months, has at least made an effort to be more discreet, not actively advertising its website address, for example.
Instead, those curious must find someone to tell them the website address or otherwise find it by browsing elsewhere on the so-called 'dark net'.
The new advert for Atlantis, which is almost certainly against YouTube's terms of service, asks viewers to 'meet Charlie', a 'stoner' who has moved cities for work and has since been unable to find any 'dank buds'.
'He didn't think he'd ever find weed again, until he found Atlantis,' it says.
The story ends with Charlie getting 'high as a damn kite' thanks to the purchase he made through the site.
It concludes: 'So now that big problem Charlie had has completely gone away!'
A person claiming to the the online bazaar's CEO recently told Reddit users on an 'ask me anything' thread: 'We want to bring attention to the site and bring our vendors more buyers.
He said he wasn't concerned that drawing attention to the site might attract any unwanted attention from police.
'Law enforcement is going to be aware of us (and probably already is) regardless of the way we choose to put our product out there,' he said.
Although Atlantis is set up to facilitate transactions involving a string of dangerous drugs and illegal services, its CEO, whose Reddit account has since been deleted, says there are limits to what is acceptable on the site.
'We do not allow listings such as child pornography and necrophilia,' he said. 'We do take a moral stance, there's a large difference between child pornography and drugs.'
He added: 'Restricted items include anything related to paedophilia, poisons, loans, investment opportunities, assassination services or anything which can inflict harm on another person.
'If you infringe on these rules we will terminate your account instantly.'
From the responses he gives to various questions on the Reddit AMA, it is clear that the CEO, whoever he is, believes there is little chance authorities can act against Atlantis.
'We have team members in various different countries,' he said. 'I would say physical location is relatively irrelevant.
'We can access our systems from anywhere, and our location and the server location is protected by the Tor hidden service network.'
He said he wasn't concerned that drawing attention to the site might attract any unwanted attention from police.
'Law enforcement is going to be aware of us (and probably already is) regardless of the way we choose to put our product out there,' he said.
Although Atlantis is set up to facilitate transactions involving a string of dangerous drugs and illegal services, its CEO, whose Reddit account has since been deleted, says there are limits to what is acceptable on the site.
'We do not allow listings such as child pornography and necrophilia,' he said. 'We do take a moral stance, there's a large difference between child pornography and drugs.'
He added: 'Restricted items include anything related to paedophilia, poisons, loans, investment opportunities, assassination services or anything which can inflict harm on another person.
'If you infringe on these rules we will terminate your account instantly.'
From the responses he gives to various questions on the Reddit AMA, it is clear that the CEO, whoever he is, believes there is little chance authorities can act against Atlantis.
'We have team members in various different countries,' he said. 'I would say physical location is relatively irrelevant.
'We can access our systems from anywhere, and our location and the server location is protected by the Tor hidden service network.'
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