Joker’s Stash closure kicks off competition for a successor.
The largest illicit marketplace for stolen payment card data, Joker’s Stash, officially shut down today.
Threat intel experts at Flashpoint predict one of four contenders will step in to fill the vacuum left by the site’s departure from the cybercrime scene.
Joker’s Stash closed on schedule, 30 days after its founder announced he was pulling down the shutters on the cybercrime bazaar.
Increased law enforcement scrutiny hastened the marketplace’s demise but not the illicit business model it mined, according to a white paper from Flashpoint.
The security firm reckons four cybercrime marketplaces are primed to become the leading exponent of the Joker’s Stash model.
Explanation
Joker’s Stash, the longest running stolen payment card shop, launched in 2014 in the wake of several major credit card breaches and the success of other illicit stores such as Silk Road.
It successfully sold credit card details stolen from various data breaches for just over six years. Since 2017 the site has hosted shops and associated infrastructure via blockchain DNS, which according to one operator “is perfect bcoz its impossible to abuse and it’s fully resistant to domain locks”.
Joker’s Stash operated as a kind of blackmarket equivalent of eBay or Amazon Marketplace, taking a cut of sales proceeds generated by third party vendors.
Ian Gray, director of analysis and research at Flashpoint, said: “Our insights show that what from the outside appeared to be a sudden and unexpected shutdown of Joker’s Stash was in fact a long-term decline.”
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