Ad campaign in Moscow promotes a darknet drug marketplace

Moscow has been reaching the headlines recently following an attention-grabbing ad campaign spread through the city, displaying a photo of a woman in a mask who seemed to be advertising a Russian darknet drug trading site called ‘Blacksprut.’

The electronic billboard also shows the phrase, “Come to me if you’re looking for the best,” written in the Russian/Cyrillic alphabet.

With both presence on the darknet and the clear web, the Russian-based Blacksprut market has been operating since May 2021 and is focused on selling illegal drugs. Reports state that this market gained notoriety upon the Hydra market’s closure and now caters to nearly Russia’s entirety.

 

The billboard organisers seemed not to bat an eyelid about the ad campaign.

 

According to analysts, the outright advertisement of the illicit marketplace in a public space could either indicate that the billboard organisers are unaware of the brand’s activities or that the billboards were hacked. Either way, it is suspicious how no authorised entity had examined the ad campaign before making it public.

On the other hand, researchers say that Blacksprut had been supportive of Moscow’s Kremlin, especially with the current invasion of Ukraine. Several other illicit marketplaces, such as Solaris, had backed Russia in the war, with reports saying that the group donated cryptocurrency funds to purchase combat equipment and body armour.

The openness of the Blacksprut ad campaign in Moscow could also show how the country has been essentially permissive – at a certain acceptable level – about offering illegal services on underground platforms.

Furthermore, it has been discovered that the Blacksprut marketplace has a publicly-available entry point platform, which differs from other marketplaces. It is also one of the successors of the Hydra marketplace, a now-seized Russian dark web marketplace that facilitated the trade of illegal drugs, stolen sensitive documents, and money laundering.

In general, authorities have been challenged to seize and disrupt the operations of illicit marketplaces like Blacksprut because of their anonymity and ease of migration to other infrastructures or identities once detected by law enforcement agencies.