Experts: Beware of Vaccines Offered for Sale on Darknet

Three major Covid-19 vaccines are being advertised for sale on the darknet - the part of the internet not visible to search engines and which requires specialised software to access, an analysis of 15 marketplaces has found.

Researchers at the global security company Kaspersky found advertisements for the Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna vaccines, as well as sellers advertising unverified vaccines.

The majority of sellers came from France, Germany, the UK and the US, and prices per dose ranged from A0 to ,200, with an average cost about 0.

"Communications are made via encrypted messaging apps like Wickr and Telegram, while payments are requested in the form of cryptocurrency, primarily bitcoin," the analysis found.

"The majority of these underground sellers have made between 100-500 transactions, indicating that they've been completing sales but what exactly darknet users are purchasing remains unclear. With the information available to Kaspersky experts, it's impossible to tell how many of the vaccines doses being advertised online are actual doses and how many advertisements are a scam."

An Australian National University regulation and global governance researcher, Prof Roderic Broadhurst, and his colleagues conducted a similar darkweb analysis in April, examining personal protective equipment and novel Covid-19 "treatments" being sold on 20 darknet marketplaces.

That study found 12 markets posting Covid-19 products, with three markets accounting for 85% of all 645 listings. Even at that time, before any strong vaccine candidate had been produced, Broadhurst found sellers advertising vaccines, the most expensive of which was listed at A,598. Vaccines allegedly sourced from China were also costly, at ,000.