Operation Ore was a British police operation that commenced in 1999 following information received from US law enforcement, which was intended to prosecute thousands of users of a website reportedly featuring child pornography. It was the United Kingdom's biggest ever computer crime investigation, leading to 7,250 suspects identified, 4,283 homes searched, 3,744 arrests, 1,848 charged, 1,451 convictions, 493 cautioned and 140 children removed from suspected dangerous situations and an estimated 33 suicides. Operation Ore identified and prosecuted some sex offenders, but the validity of the police procedures was later questioned, as errors in the investigations resulted in many false arrests.
Operation Avalanche was a major United States investigation of child pornography on the Internet launched in 1999 after the arrest and conviction of Thomas and Janice Reedy, who operated an Internet pornography business called Landslide Productions in Fort Worth, Texas. It was made public in early August 2001 at the end of Operation Avalanche that 100 arrests were made out of 144 suspects. It was followed by Operation Ore in the United Kingdom, Operation Snowball in Canada, Operation Pecunia in Germany, Operation Amethyst in Ireland and Operation Genesis in Switzerland.
Ransomware is a type of cryptovirological malware that permanently blocks access to the victim's personal data unless a ransom is paid. While some simple ransomware may lock the system without damaging any files, more advanced malware uses a technique called cryptoviral extortion. It encrypts the victim's files, making them inaccessible, and demands a ransom payment to decrypt them. In a properly implemented cryptoviral extortion attack, recovering the files without the decryption key is an intractable problem, and difficult-to-trace digital currencies such as paysafecard or Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are used for the ransoms, making tracing and prosecuting the perpetrators difficult.
Operation Amethyst was a Garda Síochána (police) operation targeting child pornography in the Republic of Ireland. Involving simultaneous searches on May 27, 2002 of over 100 individuals suspected of downloading child pornography, it was one of the largest police operations in Ireland's history.
Sebastian Edathy is a former German politician. He is a prominent member of the Social Democratic Party and became the chairman of a key committee in January 2012 at the Parliament, which was investigating failures of police and intelligence units in the serial murders of nine immigrants by the far-right German terrorist group National Socialist Underground (NSU) from 2000 to 2007. The NSU committee questioned various officials from Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office during 2012 and 2013. His alleged possession of child porn material sparked the Edathy-Affäre.
Lolita City was a child pornography website that used hidden services available through the Tor network. The site hosted images and videos of underage males and females ranging up to 17 years of age. The website was hosted by Freedom Hosting, a defunct Tor-based web hosting provider.
Freedom Hosting was a Tor specialist web hosting service that was established in 2008. At its height in August 2013, it was the largest Tor web host.
The dark web is the World Wide Web content that exists on darknets: overlay networks that use the Internet but require specific software, configurations, or authorization to access. Through the dark web, private computer networks can communicate and conduct business anonymously without divulging identifying information, such as a user's location. The dark web forms a small part of the deep web, the part of the web not indexed by web search engines, although sometimes the term deep web is mistakenly used to refer specifically to the dark web.
Operation Onymous was an international law enforcement operation targeting darknet markets and other hidden services operating on the Tor network.
Pornhub is a Canadian-owned internet pornography video-sharing website, one of several owned by adult entertainment conglomerate Aylo. As of February 2024, Pornhub is the 13th-most-visited website in the world and the second-most-visited adult website, after XVideos.
AlphaBay was a darknet market operating at different times between September 2014 and February 2023. At times, it was both an onion service on the Tor network and an I2P node on I2P. After it was shut down in July 2017 following law enforcement action in the United States, Canada, and Thailand as part of Operation Bayonet, it was relaunched in August 2021 by the self-described co-founder and security administrator DeSnake. The alleged original founder, Alexandre Cazes, a Canadian citizen born on 19 October 1991, was found dead in his cell in Thailand several days after his arrest, with police suspecting suicide.
A darknet market is a commercial website on the dark web that operates via darknets such as Tor and I2P. They function primarily as black markets, selling or brokering transactions involving drugs, cyber-arms, weapons, counterfeit currency, stolen credit card details, forged documents, unlicensed pharmaceuticals, steroids, and other illicit goods as well as the sale of legal products. In December 2014, a study by Gareth Owen from the University of Portsmouth suggested the second most popular sites on Tor were darknet markets.
DeepDotWeb was a news site dedicated to events in and surrounding the dark web featuring interviews and reviews about darknet markets, Tor hidden services, privacy, bitcoin, and related news. The website was seized on May 7, 2019, during an investigation into the owners' affiliate marketing model, in which they received money for posting links to certain darknet markets, and for which they were charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering. In March 2021 site administrator Tal Prihar pleaded guilty to his charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Playpen was a notorious darknet child pornography website that operated from August 2014 to March 2015. The website operated through the Tor network which allowed users to use the website anonymously. After running the website for 6 months, the website owner Steven W. Chase was captured by the FBI. After his capture, the FBI continued to run the website for another 13 days as part of Operation Pacifier.
Hansa was an online darknet market which operated on a hidden service of the Tor network.
Operation Bayonet was a multinational law enforcement operation culminating in 2017 targeting the AlphaBay and Hansa darknet markets. Many other darknet markets were also shut down.
Childs Play [sic] was a child pornography website on the darknet that operated from April 2016 to September 2017, which at its peak was the largest of its class. The site was concealed by being run as a hidden service on the Tor network. After running the site for the first six months, owner Benjamin Faulkner of North Bay, Ontario, Canada, was captured by the United States Department of Homeland Security. For the remaining eleven months the website was owned and operated by the Australian Queensland Police Service's Task Force Argos, as part of Operation Artemis.
The Welcome to Video case involved the investigation and prosecution of a child pornography ring which traded videos through the South Korean website Welcome to Video, owned and operated by Son Jung-woo. Authorities estimated about 360,000 downloads had been made through the website, which had roughly 1.2 million members, 4,000 of which were paid members, from 38 countries. Through international cooperation and investigations, 337 people were arrested on charges of possessing child pornography.
Operation Dark HunTOR was an international law enforcement operation targeting opioid trafficking and other illegal activities on The Onion Router (TOR). The operation, which 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.
Operation Lobos (, also known as Operation Wolves, was a Brazilian-centered 12-country, multinational operation, to target operations of a TOR onion service known as Baby Heart. Additional objectives/targets of the joint operation were the deanonymization of the TOR host server, TOR administrator and TOR users associated with the Target Website and several other targeted websites/chat-sites that were alleged to contain or be used to traffic illegal images of child sexual abuse materials and other categories of legal nude and non-nude images of persons under 18. As of February 2024, the complete list of target websites/chat-sites involved in this operation have not been released by any government, however, the primary targets appeared to be the following: Baby-Heart, Hurt-meh, Boyvids 4.0, Anjos Prohibidos /Forbidden-Angels, and Loli Lust. Court documents have indicated that there were at least two other websites/chat-sites that were targeted, however the names of the websites/chat-sites have not been made public.
