On its first birthday, Silk Road 2.0 has been seized by the FBI.

In a joint operation between the FBI and Europol, the operator of the online drug marketplace Silk Road 2.0, Blake Benthall, aka ‘Defcon’, has been arrested in San Francisco, CA.

The FBI tweeted:

Details on Silk Road 2.0, including the arrest of Blake Benthall in San Francisco by FBI agents http://t.co/9vYf8E6Aa0 — FBI New York (@NewYorkFBI) November 6, 2014

It’s been suggested by European police that further shutdowns and arrests will take place in the next 24 hours. Twitter user @iammoustache tweeted earlier today:

All the following Markets and Hidden Services are down: Silk Road Silk Road Forum Cloud9 BlueSky TheHub Hydra Onionshop Alpaca Pandora — Moustache (@lamoustache) November 6, 2014

The reason for these sites being down hasn’t been confirmed, but it’s unlikely that it’s just a coincidence.

The FBI posted a press release earlier today, which goes into detail about the operation.

Dark web

The dark web – which is in short a hidden version of the Internet not indexed by standard search engines – is home to hundreds of websites running illegal operations. The BBC has recently started a new series about cyber crime which talked about the dark web and Silk Road 1.0 in its first episode.

Updates to follow