New search engine Kilos has appeared on the darknet

[Tomcat]

Specialists from IntSights, a company that analyzes threats on the darknet, studied the new search engine Kilos, which began advertising on the network in mid-November this year. Its developers first announced themselves on Reddit on November 15, 2020, announcing that they are introducing Kilos "a new search engine for marketplaces on the darknet."

Of course, Kilos is far from the first and not the only search engine on the darknet, at least you can remember Torch and TorLinks, but the developers of the new product claim that their brainchild offers more extensive filtering options to search for specific products on numerous marketplaces.

The researchers say that Kilos appears to have originated from another search engine known as Grams. Both try to emulate Google's design and are named after weight units. However, this is where the similarities end. It is unclear whether the same developers are involved in the creation of Kilos, or whether the new search engine competes with Grams at all. Experts note that Kilos has gone further than competitors and has included in search and forums in addition to marketplaces.

With Kilos, you can explore specific darknet marketplaces for specific products. The visitor sets the required product or service, and his request goes through various marketplaces and forums. Researchers also note the powerful filtering capabilities of the search engine. For example, a user can restrict searches to only those people who can deal with Bitcoin, Litecoin and Monero, and can deliver goods to a specific country. Kilos allows the user to search multiple marketplaces at once, without requiring existing accounts on each of them.

Interestingly, the filtering capabilities of a search engine are closely related to filtering on individual marketplaces, which led researchers to speculate that the same filtering mechanism may be used on large marketplaces and in Kilos itself.

Earlier this month, search engine authors claimed that Kilos indexed 427,150 forum posts, 48,437 listings, and 1,993 merchants. At the time of the IntSight study, he stated that "since November 10, 2019, he has served 15,437 search queries."

Another interesting aspect of Kilos' work is publishing a list of the top searches for the week. Experts write that drugs are predictably predominant in this list, but they also noticed requests to search for weapons, passports and banks (that is, bank card data).

IntSights analysts say the existence of Kilos can benefit not only criminals, but also law enforcement agencies. Although they already have their own agents on marketplaces and forums, a search engine can help them gather information.

“For example, a spike in highly ranked search queries over a period of time could indicate a potential interest for criminals: it could be related to new types of malware advertised on forums. Knowing where the products of interest are sold can help in investigating the activities of a particular seller, while correlation with the movement of the cryptocurrency can provide an in-depth understanding of what is happening, ”the experts write.

It is currently unclear how the Kilos operators intend to monetize their search engine. Analysts believe that this will almost certainly be done through advertising. So, currently on the homepage you can already see the offer of free advertising credit for sellers.