Operation Dark HunTor

Operation Dark HunTOR was an international law enforcement operation targeting opioid trafficking and other illegal activities on the Tor network. The operation was conducted across the United States, Australia, and Europe over a period of 10 months. 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.

The name of the operation is a portmanteau of "hunt" or "hunter" and Tor, a free overlay network that is often used to access the dark web.

Methodology

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 was "controlled buys" of drugs from dark market sites and then working to trace sales 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 dark 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.

Legality

The U.S. Government and other partnering governments have been secretive in their transparency regarding this operation.