Agora, the Tor network’s largest black marketplace, has been temporarily shut down because its administrators worry the website is vulnerable to recent methods of exposing Tor Hidden Services.

Hidden services are websites that can only be accessed from within the Tor network, which is specifically designed to hide the IP address of both servers and users. The built-in anonymity safeguards have made Tor Hidden Services the preferred method for running online marketplaces that allow buying and selling illegal goods like drugs, guns, stolen credit card details and more.

The largest of these so-called dark markets was Silk Road, which was eventually shut down by the FBI in 2013. Many similar websites have appeared since then and some were targeted in subsequent international law enforcement raids, but Agora survived and surpassed even Silk Road in size and popularity.

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