On Thursday the US Department of Justice and Europol jointly announced the shutdown of two major dark web marketplaces, including AlphaBay, which was until recently the largest such site.

The episode is one of the most significant law enforcement actions against the dark web to date, and the highest profile since the arrest of Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the original Silk Road. Dutch authorities announced they had also taken down Hansa, another popular dark web marketplace that grew in popularity after AlphaBay went down earlier this month. However dramatic, the actions are unlikely to significantly dent the overall online trade in narcotics, stolen data, or weapons.

"The dark web is not a place to hide," US Attorney General Jeff Sessions said during a press conference on Thursday. Officials in the press conference did not give explicit details on how they identified the administrators or the location of the sites' servers.