After a significant distributed denial of service (DDoS) assault kept the site down for an extended amount of time, one of the world’s largest dark web marketplaces for all things cannabis has been permanently closed.
The Cannazon marketplace’s proprietors explained that the DDoS assault was not the reason for the shutdown in an official release, but it provided them with an opportunity to shut down the website as planned.
“No market will be here forever,” the announcement reads. “We are officially retiring. The massive DDoS attack was a very good chance to lower the number of orders and we decided to keep the market partially offline afterwards. This is the reason why the market was not reachable and not fully functional in the last days. By this, we could ensure that the number of orders was minimized and all paid orders were shipped.”
Online market for cannabis
The community was abuzz with talk of an exit scam after the site’s poor end performance. Cannazon’s operators also addressed the issue in the statement, saying that all vendors had been identified (or will be in the coming days)
“All open orders have been finalized now, disputes have been settled and refunded eventually. All vendors are able to withdraw their money. If your most recent order is delayed, you can still contact your vendor on the market regarding this.”
The operators said those who missed out on collecting all of their signed Bitcoin multisig transactions should keep an eye out for a secret message provided by Dread later this week.
Cannabis is still prohibited in most countries, and Cannazon’s owners only served non-American customers. Users who wanted to acquire cannabis-related items had to create an account and fund it using Bitcoin or Monero cryptocurrency.
When a major dark web market closes, new entrants typically spring up in its place. Some malevolent individuals attempt to take advantage of this power vacuum by creating phony websites that just phish for data and distribute malware.
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