 So I was just casually browsing a friendly neighborhood dark web forum when I stumbled upon a post from a dark web vendor that's offering one of the most innovative and also insane caution thrown to the wind delivery methods that I've seen for anything much less illicit pharmaceutical goods drone delivery only with octopus this service will be available for selected destinations for security reasons we will not disclose exactly where if an order is eligible for a drone drop client will get a pm we can handle drops up to a radius of 50 kilometers 32 miles now let me be clear to youtube the cyber police and anyone else this is not an endorsement or advertisement for this vendor or any dark web market or the act of taking illicit non-dr prescribed pharmaceuticals in general that's something you should not be doing and if you are doing it and struggling with addiction please follow michael jordan's advice stop it get some help I do however find the ecosystem of hidden marketplace is very fascinating especially when something this crazy happens like the last time I even heard about drone based deliveries for products bought online was from amazon's commercials I mean think about it the world's biggest e-commerce giant ever in this guy are both just living in the future I wonder if this guy was hanging out with Jeff Bezos on his yacht you know snorting some crushed up flint stones vitamins together when they came up with the idea of direct drone drug shipments now believe it or not this actually is not the first time ever that drug dealers have used drones for delivering their product it's actually become a somewhat common thing at prisons throughout the United States and Canada people on the outside usually with gang connections to people that are in the prison will deliver contraband like drugs alcohol and cell phones to inmates via drone drops when they're out in the yard or in some cases the drones can even deliver through open windows to people that are still inside the jail like you can see in this video and depending on what is being delivered there you know could be a lot of hits or uses in one shipment you know it's not always just a recreational amount that's going to one inmate it's oftentimes a situation where drugs are being brought in to be dealt to people within the prison once a package is smuggled in it can take days to find the contents of the package you know even if it's something like a cell phone the landscapes around prisons are fairly clear you know usually they they have it so that I guess if a prisoner escapes you know the guards in the towers can see them for some distance and there's obviously a huge law enforcement presence around the prisons and the reason I bring that up is because I would think that type of landscape and law enforcement presence would make intercepting a drone its contents and even the drone's operator a lot easier than just random drone drops out in the real world like this person is doing but I still think that drone drops are ultimately going to pose a much greater risk to the vendor than just using the mail because with a drone delivery the vendor obviously has to be within some proximity to the customer to the pickup point in this case 50 kilometers so that means if law enforcement were to make an undercover purchase from the vendor and then they end up getting a pm to prepare for a drone delivery then they can just narrow down their suspects from a global pool to people within a couple of nearby cities and I don't think that law enforcement would really need to do that many controlled buys to narrow it down either so all of this particular vendors listings on hidden marketplaces say that they ship from France to worldwide their prices for products are always listed in euros and if you wanted to I'm sure you could do text analysis on this vendors 488 post in 1350 comments that they've made within the past year on dread alone to see if it matches the patterns of anyone else or if it matches the patterns of a French person speaking English as I suspect and other people suspect this is you know it'd be very similar to how L narrowed down his suspect pool to just a tiny region in Japan and learning some details about how the death note killed by goading Kira into killing a decoy that was being broadcast on TV in the death note anime if packages are only being sent through the mail then the vendor is further removed from the transaction they can be a little bit more anonymous and blend into a larger pool and be harder to trace when it comes to mail based deliveries vendors oftentimes drop their packages off in blue boxes or through other anonymous means you know sometimes if they're obviously organized and they've got a lot of money coming in they might have people that they hire specifically to just go to the post office that way you know the plug or like the guy who's actually bringing in all the product it doesn't get caught and usually some random address in the area is used as the return address instead of obviously a real address where the vendor is living or conducting their operations from so there's typically not that much exposure to vendors when they use the mail but when you involve a drone you're also involving a lot more paperwork that has your personal information on it at least if you purchase and operate your drone legitimately now I can't speak for France specifically but here in the United States all drones that weigh 250 grams or more so basically any drone that could even conceivably do deliveries like this have to be registered with the FAA and sometimes licenses are required to purchase and operate the drones depending on you know what size and also other local laws and stuff now of course this person being a criminal obviously might have gotten the drone through some illicit means and they might be flying dirty right they might just be flying around dropping off packs not registered you know serial number scratched off but that would be breaking the organized crime rule of only commit one crime at a time I can't tell you how many times I've seen videos of police busting people that are transporting things because the drivers made minor traffic infractions or the car had a brake light out expired inspection sticker or anything else and then they end up doing a search of the vehicle and finding contraband if French law enforcement are anything like the ones here in the States then if they catch this guy operating a drone illegally then they're probably going to search his person search his car and maybe even get a warrant to search his home as part of an investigation just into that illegal drone operation and there's also risks of the drone manufacturer collecting data about your drone's usage that law enforcement can obtain via a subpoena later on or potentially even collect in real time DJI actually has a real time solution for this called aerospace that broadcast telemetry data that includes the drone serial number and registration number to anyone that has an aerospace receiver so this is why for example if you try to fly a drone near an airport or any other air spaces where they have these receivers deployed they're going to figure out who you are okay like if at least if your drone's registered you know they know who you are and then they're going to send you a fine or you're going to face whatever other criminal penalties there would be so yeah needless to say doing deliveries via drone drops opens you up to a whole mess of trouble and no significant benefits I can see to you or your customers maybe some packs can be delivered a little bit cheaper or a little bit more quickly and as octopus said if a customer lies and says that you never delivered the pack when you actually did the next delivery could be something a little bit nastier but what are your thoughts on direct drone deliveries in this context is it a huge oppsec fail or is it an awesome way to stand out from other vendors let me know in the comments below and if you want something a little more legal to spend your hard-earned crypto on check out baste.win my online store that gives site-wide discounts to customers who pay in Monero XMR get yourself a come and find a t-shirt a tie-dye tour tee or a little daemon hoodie on baste.win today have a great night