A secretive online black market was robbed over the weekend, costing
its users possibly as much as $100 million in Bitcoins — and some say
the thieves were the marketplace owners themselves.
After the FBI shut down the largest online black market, Silk Road, in October, a number of other black market sites filled the vacuum. One was a narcotics bazaar called Sheep Marketplace.
Like Silk Road and most of its ilk, Sheep Marketplace was only accessible via Tor, the anonymizing software designed to protect users' Internet anonymity. Furthermore, all transactions were in Bitcoin, a decentralized online currency that is difficult to trace.
On Sunday (Dec. 1), Sheep Marketplace abruptly closed down, claiming one of its vendors by the name of EBOOK101 had exploited a security vulnerability to steal $6 million in Bitcoins. Most, if not all, of that money belonged to the site's numerous users, who used it to buy and sell their dubious wares.
"This vendor found bug in system and stole 5,400 BTC [about $5 million]—your money, our provisions, all was stolen," reads the message posted on the now-shuttered site's homepage. "We were trying to resolve this problem, but we were not successful."
Despite the message's promise that "all of current BTC will be distributed to users, who have filled correct BTC emergency address," it doesn't appear that any Sheep Marketplace users have received refunds.
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