Even if he has been busted, that's pretty good incentive for someone else to start up a new one if it goes down.

>>5297

Who has been busted?

>>5297

November 12, 2012, 02:15 AM

Hello everyone,

I'm alive, I'm safe. Luck would have it that the first time I'm away for more than 24 hours, the site goes down and I'm the only one that can bring it back up. As soon as we are sure there haven't been any security breaches and taken all of the necessary precautions, we will get back up and running. If anyone's orders get messed up because of this (auto-finalizing, etc), we will take full responsibility and make things right, just contact support once we're back up. I'm terribly sorry for this and all of the recent problems. I promise it is my top priority to get things running smoothly again.

- -DPR

>>5300
That page and the one linked from it
http://gawker.com/5926440/are-authorities-closing-in-on-the-online-drug-market-silk-road
seem to indicate there is a worry that DPR has been caught and may be working for authorities.

>>5303
Gawker is about as reliable a news source as the blurb for a page 3 girl.

>>5303
People shouldn't be shopping on SR without either of the following, singularly or combined: socks5, VPN or cracked/open wireless.

Tor is not secure!

They really haven't been able to cope with the traffic from new users, and it's not like they can just upgrade the servers. They should freeze new registrations for a while I think.

Plus it's been hard getting bitcoin in the UK recently.

>>5306

You're supposed to use a public key when ordering anyway. What kind of a mong would use plain text in the order fields?

>>5306
>Tor is not secure
How did you come to this conclusion?

>>5325
I'm assuming he (mis-)read the paper that suggested that controlling about a third of nodes would open the thing to compromise.

>>5324
I was talking to a quite highly rated seller. I told him I was having trouble getting hold of bitcoins and he was quite insistent I could pay him by bank transfer. He even offered to sell me bitcoins.

Has anyone not had a good experience with SR? Seems like it has been a runaway success if the foregoing posts are to be believed.

>>5327
Seems legit.

>>5328

In total,

I have bought for reasonable prices at top quality the following.. (over 18 months)

I'll get banned for posting prices but i'm in an internet cafe in a foreign country so fuck-it.

2 Ounces Swazi Buds - £80/ounce *amazing for price
10 grams Moroccan Hashish (£7-8/gram) *best iv ever had
7 grams NLX (£45, yes was SALE). *AMAZING smoke.

3-4grams of MDMA at 84% fucking sharp stuff, I forgot but maybe £25 a gram.

In Pill form you would get 125-150mg up to 200mg for about £3-5 each.

I bought an ounce of AK47 for £200 (pricey) but was the best smoke I have ever had, lovely high.

Only money I'v lost is trying to order stuff from the third world like opium an charass. But I hear its 80-90% ok to UK I was just unlucky.

>>5327

cop
cop
cop

dude, use intersango in UK ffs..

>>5331
>I'll get banned for posting prices

Oh? I wasn't aware it was illegal to talk about the prices of street drugs, merely to possess, intend to supply, or facilitate either of these. I'm not going to ban you just for talking about how you much you claim to have spent, mate. I myself paid £5852.99 for a species of endangered jaguar just the other day, after all.

I got offered 3.03BTC for £30 by a vendor, but something made me sketchy so I didn't go through with it. Bought some coins through a more expensive route instead (second life). £32 for 2.71BTC, admittedly a bit shit. Fucking fees, thought it might have been cheaper than do the whole international transfer business through mtgox or intersango but no. Was worth a try.

pingit and blockchain.info is the best rate you will get for smallish volumes

>>5334

intersango has a UK bank account you can deposit into and the fees is only like 0.65%

In some countries your paying like 10% with there exchangs..

>>5333

Fair enough, almost every forum I ever used had a strict no discussion of price policy, maybe its an American thing.

>>5336

According to Intersango they are not taking UK deposits and have no provision to do so in the future. Shome mishtake...?

Judging from google there's no reliable way of buying BTC via paypal, is there?
I've been sent a little money but it's pretty much useless in a paypal account.

>>5351
You could use virwox but you'll get shit rates and have to set up a second life account

>>5352
Fuck that. Thanks anyway

localbitcoins.com is a good site for bitcoins. Some people on there probably offer paypal, but I used a bank transfer with this guy: https://localbitcoins.com/ad/1821/buy-bitcoins-with-cash-hp2-6er-united-kingdom

I had the coins in my account in a few hours.

>>5360
9.44 is not market price lad

Bitcoins are becoming more expensive pretty rapidly. I might become a speculator.

>>5335

This man is correct. Setting up a Barclays PingIt thing (which you can do with any uk bank account & a smartphone) and using blockchain.info honestly seems to be the best thing to do.

Their rates are okay.

>>5377

Blockchain also do a (maximum £50 a pop) bank transfer service. Rates are 6%.

I'd suggest bitcoin-otc. Learn how here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYJ-GdErX1c

Make sure whoever you trade with is authenticated before you transfer money. Common (ish) scam is to trade under a known nick without authentication.

Looks like some haxors are fucking with SR at the mo.

Somehow they've managed to mess with the image server, causing product images to be overlaid with a message asking plebs to send bitcoins to some random wallet 'for quick delivery'.

More worryingly, they've also managed to disable the shipping options for purchases.

They are currently targeting the top selling products / vendors and working their way down.

Keep an eye on the SR forums for updates.

No sensimilla for me this Christmas. Serves me right for leaving things to the last minute as always...

THE WAR ON DRUGS IS OVER!

Having realised the futility of prohibition, governments around the world have indefinitely suspended the prohibition of narcotics.

DEA administrator Michele Leonhart announced today that "Silkroad has pretty much fucked our monopoly on the supply of illegal drugs."

In an unusually Frank speech she continued to declare that "Using the TOR browser (https://www.torproject.org/download) in combination with information gleaned from the Silk Road Forums (http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion), the worlds populations are now able to bypass all attempts at suppressing the masses from getting drugs outside of the DEA supply chain". Thus, continuing the battle to maintain said monopoly is beyond fiscal sensibilities; even for silly 'Mericans.

In unrelated news, it was somewhat disappointing to learn that I can't write for shit. Especially when high on drugs. Oh well...

>>5489

* It has come to our attention that we neglected to mention in our previous article that Local Bitcoins (https://localbitcoins.com) have been implicated by ourselves as being a major factor in the facilitation of purchasing narcotics outside of the DEA's purview. We humbly apologise for neglecting to mention this fact in our original article.

>>5489
How can you buy drugs online? Do they mail it to you?

>>5492

No, they electrically wire the drugs straight into your brain. For fucks sake....

>>5493

Actually...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-Doser

>>5523

Fuck off back to 4chan lad

>>5524
Seconded.

Anyone posting that i-doser crap should be lit up with the red text as far as I'm concerned.

>>5524
>>5525

Calm the fuck down lads. That post was made in jest.

Anyone else waiting an horrendously long time for orders from El Mexico? My first order arrived within 2 weeks; a current order from the same vendor has been at least 6 weeks in transit. Does anyone have experience with ordering legal products from this part of the world?

Haven't been down that road since well into last year now. Is it still running well? What are prices like atm for weed?

>>5663
Prices are good if you buy in medium sized amounts, say 5-8g. If you buy by the g you'll pay about a third more than on the street though.

Atlantis anyone?

Recently made my first purchase, 5 of JoR's Mayan Calendar blotters and 1g of his 'source G' MDMA. The acid turned up yesterday, but apparently there's a bit of a backlog with his MDMA orders so could be a while yet. I used local bitcoins for the BTC, which was very easy and went smoothly.

It was mostly a test order really, but I wish I'd bought more. It's for Glastonbury, and suddenly the other people going with us have decided they want some MDMA too.

I'll have to make more orders, but it's a shame I had to buy at that small quantity, as I'll end up paying not much less for another 2 grams as I could've got 5 for originally. It's still cheaper than what I'd have to pay here, and without having to go through a chain of 4 or more people and probably ending up disappointed.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/08/14/meet-the-dread-pirate-roberts-the-man-behind-booming-black-market-drug-website-silk-road/
Worth a read.

>>5956
http://www.dailydot.com/crime/tumblr-teens-silk-road-drug-deals/

>>5957
>Used my real name on the silk road. What was I thinking.
That has to be a joke, right? Nobody could be that stupid.

>>5959

Have you ever met a teenager?

If feel fucking awful for this generation of youngsters. I did no end of stupid things as a kid, but they live on only in the memories of a handful of people I'll probably never speak to again. This generation are chronicling their every action with phone cameras and making it public through social networking. I can't imagine what it'll be like for them in a few decades time, having every stupid youthful indiscretion preserved forever on the Wayback Machine.

How can they be this stupid? Seriously, I cannot wrap my mind around it.

>>5963
Not all drugs are that bad, are they?

>>5964
Yes.

>>5963
You have clearly fell out of a parallel universe where common sense is... well... common.

http://mobile.theverge.com/2013/10/2/4794780/fbi-seizes-underground-drug-market-silk-road-owner-indicted-in-new
Is this real?

>>6170
Yes.

>>6170
I should fucking hope not. I'd be wary of connecting to it in the next 48 hours though.

>>6170
>It looks like they sniffed him out by looking back at old Internet records (forum posts, IPs etc) from around the time of SRs appearance. The first person to ever advertise SR was DPR himself, and he used an email account attached to his natural born identity. No NSA or technical hack.
Brilliant.

>>6172
You might as well hope the sun's not going to set tonight. The FBI have confirmed as much to Reuters.

>>6171
I wonder where people will go now. I heard a lot of shit about how that Atlantis place was a DEA sting operation or whatever.

This poor bastard who ran SR must be shitting it right now. They're going to lock him up for a very long time.

http://krebsonsecurity.com.nyud.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/UlbrichtCriminalComplaint.pdf
http://www.linkedin.com/in/rossulbricht

The recent attacks on Tor services seem to be confirming the fundamental security of Tor itself. Silk Road and Hidden Hosting weren't taken down with a technical attack on Tor, but with good old detective work.

>>6179
Then there's hope. A friend of mine said "long live BMR", I expect an exodus to there after this.

>>6178
Oh my.

>>6181
I'd be worried if I was one of those 146,000 people.

>>6179
And some proper sloppiness on DPR's part.

>>6182
I wouldn't. Even if they had the technical ability to track them, they probably lack the manpower and will. The sellers on the other hand will face scrutiny.

>>6185
>they probably lack the manpower

I guess you're right, yes. They're not going to kick the door down of someone who bought a few E's six months ago, but I dunno, it would still be very worrying - if he's sloppy enough to use his own email account and get caught like this, he's probably been similarly sloppy with the design of the site/database - goodness knows what kind of data they'll find. Agree with you on the sellers.

Hope the rest of you lads on /A/ have packed your rice AND YOUR RAPE ALARMS because when the feds get your number off the databases you could be faced with a lengthy stretch in t'pokey.

>>6185

I believe the correct reponse is to tell the rozzers you were commiting fraud. You were conning idiots by selling them legal highs and herbs. Unless they bought from you they'll have trouble proving that you weren't, and it's a significantly lower sentance.

>>6191
Or if you had any knowledge of the law whatsoever, you'd know that offering and supplying controlled drugs is the exact same offence.

>>6190

Correct procedure is to PGP encrypt all discussion between you and the vendor, discussion which you then both proceed to destroy once the transaction is complete.

>In March of this year, a SR user/vendor called "FriendlyChemist" attempted to extort DPR via SR's private message system, providing proof that he had the names/addresses of thousands of vendors/users after having allegedly hacked a bigger vendor. He demanded $500,000USD, saying that he needed the money to pay off his supplier. DPR then stated that he wished to speak to FriendlyChemist's supplier.
>A user called "redandwhite" then proceeded to contact DPR, stating that he was FriendlyChemist's supplier and also the owner of his debt. DPR then solicited redandwhite to "execute" FriendlyChemist, supplying redandwhite his full name and address. After having agreed on terms, DPR sent redandwhite approximately $150,000USD (1,670BTC) to have FriendlyChemist killed. redandwhite later provided photographic proof of the alleged murder.
>Investigators could not find any record of somebody in that region being killed around that date or matching that description. This possibly implies that DPR was duped/scammed, but, DPR is also quoted as having told redandwhite the following: "Not long ago, I had a clean hit done for 80k."
http://pastebin.com/8aVN81Ta

$150K for a killing? Me thinks he has more money than sense. Up north, he'd pay a tenth of that. Supposedly.

A bit pissed off he engaged in such barbarity though. I was initially offended when he set up his gun selling site, but then bought into the whole libertarian world-view thing. Being a murderer however, makes him a hypocrite. And a cunt. Even if he was 'protecting' his customers.

Still gutted the site has gone. I have bought my ganja off there for the last year. Fuck knows where I'll get in now. Just moved area so no real-world contacts locally. Pants. On an up note, I ordered weed off there yesterday morning. And guess what just turned up?

Hum, just realised by giving money to SR I am guilty of supporting a murderer. Come to think of it, most purchases I make go to a business that engage in behaviour I detest. And what about my tax and the criminal behaviour of my government? Am I a hypocrite? Oh shit, this weed is fucking awesome. The thoughts, the thoughts man. How deep! Err, actually I appear to be rambling shite, sorry...

>>6196
Just a thought though. If someone you have never met was making your life very difficult/miserable, how many people would consider hiring someone to 'sort it out' assuming the price was good and nobody would know?

I'm kinda in the situation of someone I've never met making my life considerably worse than it would have been otherwise and given the opportunity I don't think I'd feel bad. Sure if it was someone I know even vaguely but as just some amorphous blob with a name and face I have no empathy. Does this make me a psychopath?

Not that I'd ever actually do it due to lack of opportunity/funds and not wanting to be locked in a box for the rest of my life but the fact that those are the only things stopping me is kinda worrying...

>>6196

>Hum, just realised by giving money to SR I am guilty of supporting a murderer.

If you've ever given money to Nestle or own any sort of technology or clothes, it's likely you've funded worse that a single murder.

>>6198
Yeah but the corporations only do it indirectly because they want to make money, whereas Roberts... erm... hmmm.

>>6179
Just another reason not to use persistent identities on the Internet.

>>5960
Agreed

>>6192

I do, no it isn't.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24443216

I'm sorry they arrested you Devon-lad. Are you out on bail yet? If so and they havent cut you off from the internet please tell us about what charges you're facing and what your plan of action is...

>>6179
>Silk Road and Hidden Hosting weren't taken down with a technical attack on Tor, but with good old detective work.

The authorities have not yet released any information about how they found actually found the hidden servers, in either of these cases, as far as I know.

Lots of information has been released, but not this. Personally I suspect that heavily trafficked hidden services could be located using statistical attacks pretty easily (for an NSA level organisation).

There was a news story yesterday about some lads up in Manchester being arrested. It suggested they were 'large scale' customers. AND THEY'LL COME FOR ALL OF US NEXT!!!

I wonder if this was a result of Pluto Pete having his laptop confiscated, customer records intact, or unencrypted addresses from the busted SR server. Or maybe the Manchester lads were grassed up by associates and the police are using the SR bust for cover (and to freak out other SR customers for shits and giggles)?

Either way, one of my last orders placed the day before the raid never arrived. So I have disposed of all cannabis paraphernalia, replaced my pay as go broadband sim and scrubbed my lappy. I hear the new 'English FBI' are trying to make headlines so don't want to be that silly cunt in the local newspaper arrested for "3g's of genetically modified rape skunk". I guess it's back to booze for me, at least for a couple of months...

>>6234

It's all in the court documents. The detective work required to track down Ross Ulbricht was absolutely painstaking. If the FBI did have the ability to compromise Tor, then they have gone to tremendous lengths to conceal that fact.

Leaked documents from the Snowden dossier show that the NSA consider Tor to be fundamentally secure and are working to develop sidechain attacks rather than attacking the core Tor security model; They have tried and failed to de-anonymise the network by controlling large numbers of nodes. To quote from the document:

"We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all the time. With manual analysis we can de-anonymize a very small fraction of Tor users, however, no success de-anonymizing a user ... on demand."

http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/801028/silkroad.pdf

http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/oct/04/tor-stinks-nsa-presentation-document

>>6236
>If the FBI did have the ability to compromise Tor, then they have gone to tremendous lengths to conceal that fact.

Which would explain why no court document mentions it.

>"We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all the time. With manual analysis we can de-anonymize a very small fraction of Tor users, however, no success de-anonymizing a user ... on demand."

The timing of that leak would be pretty convenient for an intelligence agency trying to look less intelligent than they really are.

The NSA do have the ability to compromise Tor by brute force - the Tor project was not designed to protect against such an adversary. The question is really whether they have done so *yet*.

>>6235
I never used silk road so I have no experience of the reality; But surely people should be using PGP encryption for all messages on a site like SR?
I even thought I read something about it saying that was the way to do it.

>>6238
You did, and they should've, but not everyone did. Also, if the sellers then kept a copy of your unencrypted details somewhere, in hard format or digital, the police then have access to your address in some form or another. That or the sellers may even be legally compelled to divulge the password for their keypairs so the police can access anything of theirs that's PGP-encrypted (I have heard of cases where people are legally forced to give over passwords or otherwise be found in contempt or something, so it could happen...I think.)

>>6239
>I have heard of cases where people are legally forced to give over passwords or otherwise be found in contempt or something, so it could happen...I think.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-11479831

>>6240
Can't believe people have forgotten about that law so quickly.

>>6240

I'd refuse to give the password as well. Only 16 weeks and no need to sign the sex offenders register, awesome.

>>6240

Just say you forgot the password. I'd like to see a counsel prove otherwise.

>>6255
Then you get out, and they ask you again. Back in you go. Enjoy.

>>6258

Double jeopardy.

As >>6257 says, it's an incredibly difficult offence to prove unless the defendant admits "my data is encrypted and I refuse to provide the key". The prosecution has to prove beyond reasonable doubt that a) there is encrypted data on the storage medium, b) that the defendant is aware of that data and c) that they know the key but are refusing to provide it.

As far as we know, only three people have ever been convicted of this offence, which suggests that securing convictions is as hard in practice as it is in theory.

Does double jeopardy exist in this country and for this 'crime'?

I'm amazed he didn't think of leaving the US while running it. I realise most countries will have laws making it illegal but still.

>>6262

He's a complete mug for staying in the US. He could have operated SR with complete impunity from Russia, because they tolerate anything that pisses off the Americans.

>>6261

Yes. Double jeopardy is a fundamental principle of English law. The only exception is murder trials where new evidence has come to light, but that only allows for the retrial of someone who has been acquitted. You cannot be prosecuted twice for the same offence in English law.

>>6259

I may be wrong, but as I understand it the RIP act allows up to three years for refusing to hand over any passwords, keys etc and that beyond this the judge may hold you in contempt of court and keep on bringing you up until you play ball.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/11/operator-of-silk-road-20-arrested-and-indicted.html

Down goes another dark marketplace. Silly sod bought a Tesla Model S using bitcoins.

>>6268

Yep. You can be held on contempt of court and basically detained indefinitely. We're yet to see this actually happen, though.

Silk Road Timeline etc

Pre-2014 bust

http://antilop.cc/sr

>>6996

>>6997

This supposedly highly intelligent rocket scientist running an illegal marketplace from a country with extremely harsh laws if caught decided to use an email with his full name to host said marketplace. It almost seems set-up because it's so ridiculously incompetent of him. Could autism have something to do with this?

>>6998

He just wasn't that smart and didn't have the relevant expertise. People setting up dark markets tend to be some combination of nerd/druggie/libertarian; Their background and predisposition just doesn't equip them for working in a hostile environment. What you really need is someone with a security and intelligence background, who knows how to create structures and processes that prevent you from making stupid slip-ups. A spook would be ideal, but a bent accountant would be my second pick.

>>6999
Agreed. Bent accountants are generally the most bent people I have ever met. It takes a particular breed of person to be anal enough about accounting and finance to be good at it, but still creative enough to be a criminal. Weapons-grade tedium in terms of personality, but dynamite to have on the team if you're doing something dodgy.

>>6999
>What you really need is someone with a security and intelligence background, who knows how to create structures and processes that prevent you from making stupid slip-ups. A spook would be ideal, but a bent accountant would be my second pick.
I would've thought the logical next step will be "hidden" services operated by organised crime with servers in locations they consider safe. I'm actually kind of surprised that more of these dark marketplaces didn't fit this model already, that it's still libertarian crypto-anarchist kids starting them up, who obviously have no idea the kind of law enforcement attention they'll get and the legal trouble they're in for.

I also have to wonder at the end game that the FBI et al are working towards. If centralised dark marketplaces continue to fall, it's only a matter of time before someone sorts out a decentralised offering instead, surely? I've read about Open Bazaar already and it's worrying to hear that, by design, preventing listing of the really horrible stuff (assassinations, kiddie porn, etc) will be effectively impossible.

>>7002

I write something up about this yesterday but deleted it because I realised this is an /A/ thread, not a /g/ thread.

Suffice to say that setting up a dark market properly is hard because along with significant technical ability you also need funding, business connections, the ability to forge multiple personalities and identities, and the ability to make business connections with shady people in foreign lands.

That in turn requires the ability to gain trust/respect without creating an identifiable identity.

Basically cybercrime is hard yo.

>>6996
I'm really impressed by the level of research and detective work put in by whoever wrote that.

>>7003

Eh, sort of but not really. As a dark market founder, you don't really need any criminal connections, as you're not actually selling drugs, merely facilitating those who do. (That, incidentally, is why we're unlikely to see organised crime get involved - dark markets undermine traditional drug trafficking and dealing businesses). Senior members of criminal organisations rely for their security on being insulated from anything that might incriminate them, but the operator of a dark market doesn't have that luxury. The buck stops with whoever has the SSH keys.

The core difficulty is in understanding what it means to be up against the full might of the state. All it takes to get busted is a single tiny slip-up. Log in from the wrong location, cross-contaminate your computers or accounts, say a single thing out of line, make a single error in your concealment and concealment, and it's game over. People just don't understand how sophisticated modern intelligence is, and how much of a case can be pieced together from the tiniest fragments of data.

DPR got most things right with SR, but he didn't get everything right, and you have to be perfect. A few seemingly insignificant slips gave the feds just enough to get a warrant; That warrant was executed so expertly that he didn't even have the chance to shut the lid on his laptop. From the running laptop they got his keys, and the keys gave them the whole case on a platter.

I mentioned bent accountants for a reason - they have pretty much exactly the skillset you need. They're used to the idea that all it takes is one tiny fuckup for the whole situation to unravel; One scrap of paper, one entry in the wrong book, one misplaced word on an unsecure phone line. They have the requisite methodical and precise mindset, combined with an understanding of how white-collar investigations are conducted and how people get busted.

>>7005
>dark markets undermine traditional drug trafficking and dealing businesses
If I was the head of a drug cartel I think I'd want to try and dominate both the online and traditional drug trade - they seem complementary to me.

>>7005

> Eh, sort of but not really. As a dark market founder, you don't really need any criminal connections

I'd disagree. Truly anonymous hosting is either done by and for criminal groups or rented using stolen/forged identities. Both imply a level of connection to crime.

I understand what you're saying about accountants having the right mindset, but unless you're prepared to commit a string of crimes in order to not get caught you're going to get caught.

Incidentally, if anyone else was wondering how law enforcement managed to find out the location of all these supposedly hidden servers, the TOR team put out a blog post about it:
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/thoughts-and-concerns-about-operation-onymous
...but it seems like a shrug of the shoulders. Apparently some relays got seized, but I don't understand TOR enough to understand what that really means.

(Sage for definitely straying in /g/ territory; I hope the off-topic is ok given the context.)

>>7006

The major failure of Dark Markets so far (with the possible, potential, exception of Agora) has been their ideological opposition to being involved with traditional cybercrime. The Russians have been have been getting away with blue murder on the Internet for a decade and never even bothered to use TOR. They have systems and setups that work with the tacit approval of both traditional organized crime and, therefore implicitly, of the Police and other Authorities. (Look up the "Russian Business Network" if you want even a vague idea of how deep that particular rabbit hole goes).

>>7008
TOR is acknowledged to be breakable by 'government agencies' under certain circumstances. The nodes that were seized were most likely the 'guard nodes' of (some) targetted hidden services. A guard node is the only node on the TOR network that is supposed to know the IP address of a hidden service that it's guarding. If there's any kind of logging and that node gets seized then it's game over.

There's a lot of interesting theories at the moment about possible strategic DDOS attacks being used to force target hidden services to create circuits composed entirely of either LEO-controlled nodes (no doubt a significant set) or heartbleed-vulnerable nodes (no doubt an even bigger set). This would obviously be game over for that hidden service.

Such an attack would probably only have been used against significantly valuable hidden services, and most of the ones we've seen busted this time around were probably obtained through much more prosaic means and simply all 'seized' at the same time as a form of psyop. (Viz the NCA's "do you still think you're safe using the darknet?" rhetoric).

> (Sage for definitely straying in /g/ territory; I hope the off-topic is ok given the context.)

Saging for the same reason, but I think that any discussion of darknet markets is by nature and necessity going to stray into /g/ territory at some point.

>>7009
Thanks for the explanation of the TOR side of things.

According to Wikipedia, RBN are involved in:
>child pornography, phishing, spam, and malware distribution
Notably drugs aren't in there, could you speculate as to why? Obviously drugs are physical rather than digital, but the potential for profit is there, to the tune of millions per year in fees alone for the operator, without needing to do much more than sit on a box and make sure law enforcement don't get near it. RBN seem like the ideal candidate to run one of these dark markets - they've got the computer expertise, organised crime connections and they appear to have immunity from police interference.

>>7010

> Notably drugs aren't in there, could you speculate as to why?

My best guess would be that it's simply not been detected yet. My own personal, educated but uninformed (as in I have no particular privileged insight), guess would be that the Agora dark market is hosted by RBN and actually migrates server on a semi-regular basis (hence the semi-regular but always short down times). It would also explain why they're currently the only darknet market not only not to be seized but to carry on operating with complete impunity and moreover complete lack of fear.

>>7011

Isn't Evolution still going? I recall someone saying that it's run by a well known carder.

>>7012

You could be right, Evolution was/is the one that allowed stolen credit card data to be sold, right?

Regardless, the following link is some truly serious business if it's at all true:

http://www.dailydot.com/politics/doxbin-dark-net/

Let me quote the title: "Dark Net hackers steal seized site back from the FBI".

Holy shit, Batman.

>>7013
>THE INDESTRUCTIBLE SKY CASTLE
Fantastic.

>>7011
http://www.wired.com/2014/12/interview-darkside-russias-favorite-dark-web-drug-lord/
Sounds like you were pretty much right.

Apparently Ross thought it would be a good idea to keep a journal chronicling his development of the Silk Road, the silly sausage.

http://www.wired.com/2015/01/heres-secret-silk-road-journal-laptop-ross-ulbricht/

(He uses the word "alot", prison's too good for this scum.)

>>7138
My favourite line:
>I imagine that some day I may have a story written about my life, and it would be good to have a detailed account of it

Later nitty gritty diary stuff:
http://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/2tdays/sr1_trial_2013_ross_ulbricht_journal/

Anyone remember Sheep Marketplace?

http://www.deepdotweb.com/2015/03/27/breaking-sheep-marketplace-owner-arrested/

The guy who was (rather convincingly) alleged to have stolen all the bitcoins has finally been busted. His missus bought a luxury house and couldn't explain where all the money came from. Some people, eh?

>>7254
He broke the first rule: never tell your bitch where your stash is.

>classy print on ecstasy pills to get people to buy them
>sky television

pick one

>>7256
What?

>Silk Road agents charged with stealing seized Bitcoin

>Two former US special agents have been charged with stealing large amounts of digital currency, which came into their possession during an investigation into the notorious Silk Road marketplace.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-32124251

>>7258
Hah fucking brilliant.

>>7258
>Bridges allegedly diverted to his personal account over $800,000 in digital currency that he gained control of during the Silk Road investigation. The complaint alleges that Bridges placed the assets into an account at Mt. Gox, the now-defunct digital currency exchange in Japan. He then allegedly wired funds into one of his personal investment accounts in the United States mere days before he sought a $2.1 million seizure warrant for Mt. Gox’s accounts.

Again I'm blown away by how stupid people can be when motivated by greed. If you're gonna do this kind of thing, for fuck's sake think it through.

>>7294
How would you go about doing it?

>>7296
If I was on $150k a year and working with people whose specific expertise was tracking illegal uses of Bitcoin, I simply wouldn't. If I was going to, I'd tumble those bitcoins using several different services, store them in a cold wallet for as long as I could bear (hopefully several years at least) and then cash out piecemeal, washing them again with whatever tumbler services are around then and using localbitcoins/other direct means of sale that help reduce the paper trail. (I'd also look into offshore bank accounts, but that's not something I know much about.) I absolutely would not dump them immediately on a public exchange and transfer the proceeds directly to an account I own in the country I live in, that is simply asking to be caught. I'm with >>7294, it's genuinely, astonishingly careless for someone in his position.

I think the Arstechnica article goes into greater detail about the man's antics, which include helping run a Bitcoin exchange and stealing from it; he was brazen to the point where I wonder if some kind of substance abuse played a role, because it's hard to imagine anyone pulling the shit he did with a clear head.

>>7296

Use my server access as part of the investigative team to fake a hacking incident.

http://www.wired.com/2015/05/silk-road-2/

This month's Wired cover story on Ross and the Silk Road trial.

>>7371
Dude, thanks for posting this. I read Part 1 a while back and thoroughly enjoyed it, had completely forgotten Part 2 was coming.

To the Bat Mobile!

>>7372
Life in jail.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/05/silk-road-matermind-ross-ulbricht-sentenced-to-life-in-prison/

>>7424
If you play high-stakes poker, sometimes you win big and sometimes you lose a lot.

>>7424
Without parole. He'll die in jail, unless he gets a miracle at appeal.

>>7427 All for running a website...
Don't get me wrong, it was obviously illegal but you get less time for fucking a child.

>>7430

He made a metric fuckton of money from the endeavour. The authorities feel they have to throw the book at him to dissuade any other like minded individuals from starting similar websites.

>>7433

>dissuade any other like minded individuals from starting similar websites.

Aren't there already a buttload of copycat sites knocking around?

>>7434

Hey, I never said it was an effective strategy. I was just trying to empathize with our authoritarian overlords to better understand the dystopian world we live in.

>>7434
There are, though in the long-term they'll probably be irrelevant. In the same way that Napster was a single point of failure for file sharing, sites like Silk Road are a single point of failure for facilitating drug purchases. A new technology will come along that requires no middle man, and puts the buyer directly in touch with the seller without need for any intermediary - it may be OpenBazaar, or it may be some other project, but I suspect its existence is a matter of "when" rather than "if".

>>7472
I'd code this if it wouldn't put me in the slammer.

>>7473
Probably wise.
>On day six of Ulbricht’s trial, the prosecutors called in a gaunt and bespectacled 31-year-old programmer named Richard Bates. Bates had known Ulbricht since the two were in college at the University of Texas at Dallas, and they reconnected when Bates returned to Austin in 2010.

>"Did the defendant share a secret with you?" prosecutor Timothy Howard asked Bates shortly after he took the stand.

>"Yes, he did," Bates answered, his voice quaking. "He revealed that he created and ran the Silk Road website."

>Bates had majored in computer science, and in 2010 got a job at eBay as a software engineer, where he still works. As 2010 drew to a close, Ulbricht, a physics major, began to ask Bates frequent questions about programming, telling Bates only that he was working on a "top secret" project.

>Bates kept pressing, though, and one night Ulbricht finally did tell him. The pair logged onto Silk Road using a neighbor's open Wi-Fi network. "I was shocked, but also intrigued," Bates said, and he continued to help Ulbricht with programming.

>"What did he offer you in exchange for his help on Silk Road?" Howard asked.

>"Nothing but his friendship," Bates said.

>Bates got off the stand in the late afternoon. As we walked out of court, he looked about to cry. The government had offered not to charge Bates in exchange for his testimony in the case against Ulbricht. But for the deal, he could have been charged with conspiracy to distribute narcotics just for the programming help he gave to Ulbricht.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/05/sunk-how-ross-ulbricht-ended-up-in-prison-for-life/

Not that it's done much to dim the demand.

>>7474

Fucking animals.

>>7476
He sold that on his site as well, did he?

>>7474
He kept a fucking journal about Silk Road? He deserved to be caught. No 'mastermind' he, leaving that treasure trove for the prosecution.

>>7478
He did indeed. Here's a few choice excerpts:

>In 2011, I am creating a year of prosperity and power beyond what I have ever experienced before. Silk Road is going to become a phenomenon and at least one person will tell me about it, unknowing that I was its creator. Good Wagon Books will find its place and get to the point that it basically runs itself. Julia and I will be happy and living together. I have many friends I can count on who are powerful and connected.
Wanker.

>I then went out with Jessica. Our conversation was somewhat deep. I felt compelled to reveal myself to her. It was terrible. I told her I have secrets. She already knows I work with bitcoin which is also terrible. I’m so stupid. Everyone knows I am working on a bitcoin exchange. I always thought honesty was the best policy and now I didn’t know what to do. I should have just told everyone I am a freelance programmer or something, but I had to tell half truths. It felt wrong to lie completely so I tried to tell the truth without revealing the bad part, but now I am in a jam. Everyone knows too much. Dammit.
Secretly the head of a global criminal conspiracy to distribute hard drugs? Tell that girl you're shagging about it!

>Well, I’m choosing to write a journal for 2012. I imagine that some day I may have a story written about my life, and it would be good to have a detailed account of it.
What could possibly go wrong?

By 2013 his journal entries are basically just notes on the day-to-day of running SR, but they're rather spooky. All the idealistic personal and political stuff is gone, replaced by entries like these:

>03/25/2013
>server was ddosed, meaning someone knew the real IP. I assumed they obtained it by becoming a guard node. So, I migrated to a new server and set up private guard nodes. There was significant downtime and someone has mentioned that they discovered the IP via a leak from lighttpd.
>03/28/2013
>being blackmailed with user info. talking with large distributor (hell's angels).
>03/29/2013
>commissioned hit on blackmailer with angels
>04/01/2013
>got word that blackmailer was excuted
>04/05/2013
>a distributor of googleyed is publishing buyer info
>mapped out the ordering process on the wiki.
>gave angels access to chat server
>04/06/2013
>made sure backup crons are working
>gave angels go ahead to find tony76
>cleaned up unused libraries on server
>added to forbidden username list to cover I <-> l scam

It's fascinating to me, and sort of a cautionary tale, to see how rapidly he descended from the idealistic, "people should be free to consume what they want, governments have a monopoly on violence" etc etc, the classic libertarian shtick, to murder for hire being just a little note on the day's happenings - alongside trivial shit about his server backups.

(Apparently he's found God now.)

I'm watching this documentary "Deep Web" (2015). It's not telling me much I didn't already know about the trial, technology or the timeline of events but it does have interviews with vendors and people who knew Ulbricht, gives a bit of insight into him as a person.

>>7479


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBdGOrcUEg8

http://www.wired.com/2015/06/feds-want-id-web-trolls-threatened-silk-road-judge/
Sweet land of liberty, muh freedoms, etc etc.

Another one bites the dust.

http://www.wired.com/2015/08/agora-dark-webs-biggest-drug-market-going-offline/

>>7258
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/corrupt-silk-road-agent-carl-force-sentenced-to-78-months/
He's going to have fun in prison.

>>7673

Same happened to Abraxas. What is now the go to site in the UK?

>>7757

AlphaBay is the current big one. A couple of sellers I recognise from the Silk Road days on there. I wonder how long it'll last.

Don't leave your money in the site for long periods of time, and do your PGP encryption of your address on your own computer rather than using the 'encrypt for me!' checkbox on the site, and you should be alright.

>>7765

> Don't leave your money in the site for long periods of time, and do your PGP encryption of your address on your own computer rather than using the 'encrypt for me!' checkbox on the site, and you should be alright.

Good advice. Think about having your gpg keyring stored encrypted on a USB drive or something - nothing like having the pubkeys of a bunch of known vendors on your keyring to serve as evidence .

> AlphaBay

AB will exit scam at some point, just be aware of that and try to use vendors that you "know" and "trust" as much as possible. A general good DNM rule is to avoid the so-called one stop shops.

Also don't do any multi-sig transactions; they can be easily and instantly tracked from you all the way to the BTC exchange when the vendor cashes out. They were designed to make legit transactions foolproof, not illegal ones.

FWIW, Nucleus is where my favourite vendors are right now and I think there's less chance of an exit scam in the near future (although who knows). I miss Agora.

>>7767
>Also don't do any multi-sig transactions; they can be easily and instantly tracked from you all the way to the BTC exchange when the vendor cashes out. They were designed to make legit transactions foolproof, not illegal ones.
Can you explain this? All bitcoin transactions are viewable on the blockchain so if the vendor's address is known to law enforcement then you're just as linked as if you had done a multi-sig transaction, surely? I would have thought that using a tumbler service would be the only "safe" way to do a transaction, either way (to the extent that you trust that your tumbler of choice isn't a honeypot).

You guys...stop buying drugs of the internet for god's sake. It's all so traceable.

When buying drugs, use CASH. And buy them off a human.

>>7769
The quality to risk ratio is worth it, assuming you're not buying in bulk to sell yourself. Most people don't have worthwhile connections.

>>7769
> And buy them off a human.
I'll jump in here before you smart alecs make a crack about buying drugs off Venusians or something. I meant to say face to face.

>>7769
Human jobs for human people!

>>7770
>Most people don't have worthwhile connections.
If you're in any large city, just go to the city centre and look for a gang of youths hanging about who look "gangsta". Walk past them slightly slower than you would and give them a look *make sure it isn't threatening just slightly curious*. 100% of the time I do this I get offered weed. Mind you I have long hair and look pretty much like the stereotypical stoner.

Other than that, go see some young local band, or go hang out at a musician's jam night. Ask someone there.

It's really not difficult.

Careful now.

>>7772

Well that's me shit out of luck.

>>7768>>7768

> I would have thought that using a tumbler service would be the only "safe" way to do a transaction

Exactly. Most (all?) markets do built-in "tumbling" for you because the escrow wallet is basically shared between everyone and vendor wallets are virtual - individual vendors will have virtual balances but they don't sit in actual wallets. This set up makes it almost impossible to trace individual transactions simply because of the built-in confusion; the only time BTC transactions occur is when you send money to the site and when a vendor cashes out - the actual individual purchases only happen virtually and are therefore untraceable.

With multi-sig escrow there is no shared escrow wallet, all purchases happen as individual transactions on the block chain. Both you and the vendor are directly exposed to law enforcement and they can prove exactly what you purchased and when. Big doom, basically.

>>7773
Yeah that's great if you want some bushweed but if you're after some actual LSD, your method is entirely useless.

I currently use Nucleus. As for vendors:

-Boomers: UK dealer. Excellent, if pricey, LSD and MDMA. Usually 48hr delivery.
-Feelgood: Cheap, high quality cannabis from Spain. 4-8 days delivery.
-Vendeep: UK reseller of commercial Portuguese grown cannabis if I need something quickish. 24-48hr delivery.
-Snowcap: Reliable but expensive UK cannabis dealer. 24-48hr delivery.
-Mendosa: Super cheap, clean, but average quality cannabis from spain. 5-10 days delivery.
-Fungee: Ships from Hungry. When he has stock, real nice magic mushrooms and CBD-rich cannabis. 4-8days delivery.
-Dutchmagic: Usually has a couple of decent but pricey hash offerings; I'd avoid the cheaper stuff and his weed is commercial grade at best and expensive compared to Spanish vendors. 3-9days delivery (ships from Belgium and Netherlands).
-Safe4u: Medical cannabis oil from Belgium. 3-7 days delivery.

Boomers is pretty much the only vendor I'd buy chemicals from. He has been around since the early days of darknet markets and has never let me down. I've had some really life affirming experiences with his LSD and some awesome adult fun-time with the wife and his MDMA. Top lad. As for weed, I mainly buy off Feelgood and Mendosa. Feelgood's Dancehall and Critical47 have been lovely. And £35 for 5g's. Mendosa's Kali Mist is excellent for the money. And I do like Dutchmagic's Orange hash. The above list is just a fraction of the vendors I've used. I've only had 2 out of hundreds of parcels not arrive and maybe 3 or 4 purchases that were shit. Compared to buying shitty overpriced drugs off street dealers / m8 dealers, I'd much rather use the internet and memecoins.

For educational purposes only - nucleuspf3izq7o6.onion

>>7778
Well yeah, I usually just stick to weed these days.

As for wanting to get hold of molly or lucy, well that's just rave crowds, so hang around them. They probably don't even call them raves any more. Have they brought back the word shindig yet?

>>7773

Sorry, some of us are over the age of 15 and want stuff other than weed.

>>7781
I don't think suggesting people change their lifestyles in order start trying to hang out with "rave crowds" is a viable way to get reliable drugs.

>>7783

Probably not. He just sounds like a manchild.

>>7783

Indeed I'm part of the raving crowd and I have no idea how to get anything interesting. That might be though because I assume anyone openly advertising they have these things in public is a nark.

>>7776
So what's to stop you tumbling before sending to the multisig?

>>7782
>>7783
>>7784
Fair enough lads. I'm actually well north of thirty years old and fairly out of touch when it comes to harder drugs. Back in the day I took them all, and sold almost all of them as well. But the last ten years has seen me calm down and stick to just the beer and weed because I had hammered it for so long that I just can't keep it up any more.

I'm not naive, just hopelessly out of touch when it comes to class A these days.

>>7786
> So what's to stop you tumbling before sending to the multisig?

The market itself. You can still tumble your coins before they go to the market, but once they're in your wallet every purchase can be tracked on the blockchain.

Obviously this is much worse for vendors than for consumers; all a LEO has to do to identify a specific vendor's commission wallet is to make a single purchase and follow the money trail on the blockchain.

Yeah, you and the vendor can both tumble your bitcoins on the way in/out of the market but that doesn't cover up individual purchases made (it's mainly metadata but hopefully I don't have to spell out to you how damaging that can be) and it places a lot of trust in tumblers like bitcoinfog (which has already been demonstrated to be insecure). Agora was essentially the most secure tumbler on the darknet - all you had to was put your coins on there, wait a few weeks, and cash them out - they'd be totally different coins and there'd be no way to prove that it was even *you* cashing them out.

tl;dr - single points of failure = a really bad idea for someone doing anything illegal.

I've been buying off darknet markets for 3+ years. All my purchases have been small amounts (<=50g weed <=5g MDMA <=10g Magic mushrooms <=12 squares of LSD). I have never tumbled my coins. Ever. Localbitcoins -> DNM.

What the fuck is the big deal with tumbling coins? You do realise the (UK) po-po don't give a single fuck about small-time personal customers of darknet markets? They only care about dealers and the operators of DNM sites. They don't have the budget to target us.

If you work for the NHS or GSHQ, or use TOR for noncing, I can understand why you would be paranoid. However, I'd be more worried that it's pretty simple to identify you as a TOR user and whatever that suggests. Again, something I have never tried to hide; mainly because the UK legal system is not going to prosecute me over 4 tabs of LSD they found in my post.

If you are a vendor, that's a whole different story; and tumbling coins is barely the first step of OPSEC. As a personal-use buyer however, no fucks are given. Have a spliff and chill the fuck out. Internet drugs are awesome and fuck local hoodlum dealers. The po-po don't give a fuck.

I'm on drugs as I type this, so take my advice with a healthy pinch of scepticism because, well, drugs are bad, m'kay?

>>7789

> What the fuck is the big deal with tumbling coins? You do realise the (UK) po-po don't give a single fuck about small-time personal customers of darknet markets?

> mainly because the UK legal system is not going to prosecute me over 4 tabs of LSD they found in my post.

That's probably true for "real life" buyers, but a bit of a leap for people buying online. All you need is for May's new JTRIG bunch to want to score up a few "cyber" busts to put the willies up everyone and that's you being made an example of.

> OPSEC

Good grief.

>>7789
> However, I'd be more worried that it's pretty simple to identify you as a TOR user and whatever that suggests.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlvYERzGQGE

>>7790

Don't be gullible lad.

> 10 darknet users were busted for buying 10000% pure LSD from darknet markets. Each have received a 6 month sentence, suspended. If you buy drugs online YOU WILL BE ARRESTED AND RAPED.

And yet the Daily Mail forget to mention that accounts for less than <0.01 of known customers of DNM's.

Itz the same bullshit about helicopters with heat-seeking cameras randomly looking for cannabis farms. Complete and utter bullocks from the UK governments nudge department. Nowt but fear mongering aimed at the feeble minded and the paranoid.

>>7792

It might be a lottery but it's still a big risk. I have security clearance, if I get a criminal record that's me and my company fucked; I'd rather not risk it, thanks. I realise that I may be an edge case.

Actually I think you and I might be talking at cross-purposes. I'm specifically talking about the risk of multi-sig transactions on EIM and AB; I regularly sent coin directly to Agora with no worry at all exactly because I knew that my safety was being taken care of in terms of specific plausible deniability. I wasn't buying nuffin but etizolam of dat market, honest guv.

>>7790
>Good grief.

If your OpSec isn't MilSpec you're in for an upset I expect.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-variety-show

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=935434.msg13163143#msg13163143

The intrigue continues, but I think that pretty much wraps up the original Silk Road crew. Long prison terms ahead.

Exclusive: Dutch Cops on AlphaBay ‘Refugees’

>Following today’s breaking news about U.S. and international authorities taking down the competing Dark Web drug bazaars AlphaBay and Hansa Market, KrebsOnSecurity caught up with the Dutch investigators who took over Hansa on June 20, 2017. When U.S. authorities shuttered AlphaBay on July 5, police in The Netherlands saw a massive influx of AlphaBay refugees who were unwittingly fleeing directly into the arms of investigators. What follows are snippets from an exclusive interview with Petra Haandrikman, team leader of the Dutch police unit that infiltrated Hansa.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/07/exclusive-dutch-cops-on-alphabay-refugees/

>>7952
The Hansa bust at the same time is a masterstroke - the LEA are getting good at this stuff.

Sorry for the necrobump but didn't think it was worth a new thread.

Basically if someone theoretically wanted to start perusing dnms (for research) what's the easiest, idiot proof way of doing it? I've got a mac I use for day to day browsing but from what I've read I might be better off just buying a cheap laptop specifically for the purpose, then basically use TOR and TAILS?

If you know of any decent idiots guides for this sort of thing would appreciate a point in the right direction.

>>8497

The easiest option is to run TAILS on a burner laptop. It's designed to be relatively foolproof and is used by a lot of people to do proper naughty things, largely without incident. The TAILS documentation is pretty good and you shouldn't find it too challenging to get running if you're reasonably tech savvy. If you know what an ISO is, it'll be piss-easy.

TAILS is designed by some very smart people to be extremely secure, but it isn't 100% guaranteed to protect your identity; there is a very small chance that your machine could be hacked, causing your true IP address to leak. This is highly unlikely unless you're doing Extremely Naughty Things that make you a high priority target for a major intelligence agency, but it can be mitigated if you think that's a realistic threat model. If you do think that's a realistic threat model, then you need to teach yourself infosec to a high level or get treatment for your paranoia.

TAILS provides a very high level of anonymity, but it can't guarantee privacy - any information you send over the network can potentially be intercepted or seized. That's not a big worry if you're just buying a few dingers from a reputable seller, but it's certainly something to be aware of.

>>8498

Appreciate the reply ladm8. Nowt too naughty just had a supply dry up and looking to expand options. Nothing to put me on any radars of import.