Jon Swartz, and Elizabeth Weise

USATODAY

SAN FRANCISCO — Counterfeit traffic on the "Dark Web," the less visible area of the Internet where criminals trade in illicit products and conceal their identities, has doubled year over year, according to security researcher ESET.

Directories on the Dark Web link to 500 sites that sell everything from fake passports and counterfeit currency to weapons, hard drugs and stolen credit-card numbers.

And the emergence of bitcoin as a quick and easy digital currency has deepened the problem. When a buyer clicks to purchase, using bitcoin or a credit card, the information goes to another site, often in Eastern Europe, which in turn, transfers the order to a distributor in a third country, often India, China or Pakistan. The buy-and-sell traffic flows through a heavily encrypted underground computer network known as "The Onion Router" or "Tor."

Even the FBI's dismantling last year of Silk Road — a Dark Web site responsible for more than $1.2 billion in sales of illegal drugs, guns and porn — didn't last long. A new site, dubbed Silk Road 2.0, briefly emerged — doing much of the same. And Grams, a new search engine accessible through Tor, trades in drugs, guns, stolen credit-card numbers, counterfeit cash and fake IDs.

Perpetrators of underground digital sites have taken to "mixing services," in which bitcoin purchases are transferred between multiple parties to conceal their transactions, says Ryan Olsen, a researcher at computer-security firm Palo Alto Networks.

"The untraceable nature of financial origins offered by Bitcoin bundled with the location anonymity innate to the Tor network puts counterfeit-goods trafficking on steroids," says Hemanshu Nigam, CEO of SSP Blue, an online security consulting firm.