Quantifying Dark Web Shops’ Illicit Revenue

The Dark Web, primarily Tor, has evolved to protect user privacy and freedom of speech through anonymous routing. However, Tor also facilitates cybercriminal actors who utilize it for illicit activities. Quantifying the size and nature of such activity is challenging, as Tor complicates indexing by design. This paper proposes a methodology to estimate both size and nature of illicit commercial activity on the Dark Web. We demonstrate this based on crawling Tor for single-vendor Dark Web Shops, i.e., niche storefronts operated by single cybercriminal actors or small groups. Based on data collected from Tor, we show that just in 2021, Dark Web Shops generated at least 113 million USD in revenue. Sexual abuse is the top illicit revenue category, followed by financial crime at a great distance. We also compare Dark Web Shops’ activity with a large Dark Web Marketplace, showing that these are parallel economies. Our methodology contributes towards automated analysis of illicit activity in Tor. Furthermore our analysis sheds light on the evolving Dark Web Shop ecosystem and provides insights into evidence-based policymaking regarding criminal Dark Web activity.