FBI raids alleged online drug market Silk Road, arrests owner

Criminal Complaint against Ross Ulbricht aka "Dread Pirate Roberts" [pdf] + mirror

SilkRoad domain states "This Hidden Site Has Been Seized" by numerous US Gov't Agencies

Excerpts from the Criminal Complaint:





Apparently the FBI managed to track down the actual server running the site:



This server image seems to have been the source of a lot of the evidence leading to the arrest warrant: the IP logs that matched his location, an account name that matched his StackOverflow account, and of course all the private messages and chat logs regarding his personal location (messages indicating Pacific time), operation of the site (payments to other admins), and the extortion attempt/attempted hit.

What the complaint doesn't specify is how the FBI managed to locate the Silk Road server. It's possible that they already had some suspicion of DPR's identity, and managed to bug his computers or otherwise track his activity well enough to figure out what systems he was logging into. But given how coy the complaint is about this, I wonder if in fact this is the result of a sophisticated analysis of Tor network traffic (possibly in collaboration with the NSA?). If that's the case, it betrays a level of capability that ought to be frightening for the operators of other anonymous Tor services.

Rumor has it that Prosecutors have obtained a court order to scan and seize all Bitcoin wallets hosted therein.

I wonder if the timing on this is deliberate. The office that handles FOIA requests is part of the current government shutdown, but the three-letter agencies aren't. So the only information that's going to come out on this for the time being is whatever the people running the investigation want to come out..

Maybe it's not deliberate, but keep that in mind. There's going to be only one source on this story for a long time.

...and i was thinking about just cashing out my bitcoins. Well, you can't know what happens....they're already 40$ down ....and i guess they will crash hard. Who knows what the feds are doing with the seized 3.6 million in btc (if i read the news right).

Yeah, it's also a sad day for Tor if they were able to track them down using NSA technology , traffic analyses etc...

Tor dead
btc dead
online drugs dead

not a good day.

edit: wow, what the ...https://medium.com/p/d48995e8eb5a

Here is a nice analyses on how they caught DPR:
http://www.reddit.com/r/...llout_discussion/ccjlwgp

Apparently it was not through TOR at all, he already left traces in several places which made it pretty easy to find him.




Kind regards,

The Traveler

Meanwhile child porn and other atrocious websites that are far more harmful continue to operate. What a waste of time and resources....They never learn..something else will just pop up in its place (i read months ago that something already has started to, but the name evades me atm). Thats what has been happening with the "war on [some] drugs" for decades: when you take out one supplier another will rise up to meet the demand. Theres no reason this would suddenly be any different on the internet.

<NOPE, NO MENTIONING OF THAT...>

I never purchased from SR but it's a shame that it's gone. Instead of purchasing substances anonymously from the safety of their homes, people will go back to buying on the (potentially dangerous) street with only their dealers assurance that what they bought is legitimate. Hardly a good move in regards to the people's safety. Definitely not the right focus for the federal government at this time.

However, in time I'm sure the underground will rebuild itself

This thread can exist here because silk roads is now non-existant. Its an interesting case to talk about which is very relevant in terms of online security, and what the `deep web` represents in this day and age... but PLEASE, lets NOT discuss about buying drugs nor about other similar places that are still in existance, as our attitude page clearly states.

Edit: apologies Endlessness, we'll keep on topic

I would have liked to be aware of such "Goods" and "Services".

Shame I find out about what all was offered after it's over.

End of Silk Road: FBI documents show errors tripped up Internet drug market

Yes, there is. Packets traveling over the network today are scanned, stored and logged. If you use the internet then you are subject to the technology which runs it. In addition, making connections is much easier (as The Traveler pointed out).



Thankfully this has become much less a problem. See: Freedom Hosting


The deep web is not so deep anymore...

<NOPE, THAT AINT GOOD EITHER...>, but what distresses me most about this is that it happened while the US Government is shut down.

Apparently the budget is too stressed and delicate to allow for things like National Parks, but the Drug Warriors that deal with prosecuting a market like this (*insert rant about victimless crimes here, you've all heard it before*) are "essential personnel."

<AND NO CT'S PLEASE>

Blessings
~ND

Im split on its demise, it will cost some middlemen their lives and maybe addicts too to name a couple. Cannabis med users must also get a mention.
However I hope this will stop or at least reduce any reckless unsustainable harvesting and destruction of acacia trees and other such species in the name of profit.

I've locked this thread to clean up all the parts about buying/selling. endlessness mentioned this before but it seems people are not listening.

Anyone who mentions anything about buying/selling after I have cleaned it up and reopening this thread will face a nice few months away from the DMT-Nexus.


The Traveler

And we are open again...


The Traveler

If this was true, they would have probably already gotten him through TOR scanning or similar but they got him through other means, dont you think?

There are other similar sites already and for sure more to pop up.

This is the age-old problem of trying to press the air out of a closed balloon, not realizing the air just displaces and the balloon fills up somewhere else. Try hard enough and it will blow in your (their) face.

Even if they would, say, break the strongest encryption thus far, or compromise TOR nodes, then a new alternative to it will appear soon enough, and if they break into that, a new even more cunning idea will come out, like the thousand headed hydra.

One thing is for sure, people won`t ever stop using drugs and water of rebellion will never stop running through the endless cracks that naturally form in the rigid walls of Control. I`d even go as far as the water of Rebellion is a byproduct of the cement production for The Wall, like a dog that doesn`t realize it`s target that keeps moving away is his own tail, and the more he tries to catch it, the more it moves away.

I couldn't agree more...

That being said, here's my opinion regarding SR...

I think it is very bad karma to make money off things that you don't approve off/believe in...
If this DPR stood behind everything that SR was "enabling"/offering, he is not a good person imho...

Also, if you're stupid enough to get caught, don't come whining about it, next time, be smarter...

Those people whose lives/"businesses" are negatively impacted by this shouldn't complain either, I mean what were they thinking, that this was going to last?

I looked at SR pages only once and immediately understood the risks involved, which far outweighed the possible convenience of using its services. (I can get almost anything that my heart desires in the real world)

Some old Flemish saying, translated literally: "If you burn your ass you have to sit on the blisters."

I found this bit in an article I read this morning:



It says later on in the article that he justified Silk Road to Forbes in a profile earlier this year via his belief in libertarianism and quotes from Ludwig von Mises.

With that being said, I still don't fully understand your comment. If we follow that logic it would be perfectly and OK for me to profit off child exploitation as long as I approved of what I was doing. Peoples ideas of what are and are not morally acceptable are very subjective.

If being a good person is defined by only doing things you believe in I could make the argument that some pretty heinous people were actually pretty cool guys.

A pretty fundamental tenet of Libertarianism is that you should be allowed whatever you want, as long as you are not infringing on the rights of others.
So, if you're selling drugs to someone, there is no victim because no one's rights are being infringed.
If you're exploiting children, you are in the wrong because you are depriving those children of certain rights.

Selling drugs is a victimless crime? Someone should let the cartels know that. I can think of about 50,000 dead Mexicans who may disagree though. There is a reason I produce the substances I consume whenever possible rather than buying them.

Also, on a hypothetical, SR was anonymous and sellers would sell to anyone with the BTC. What if some of the people on there buying drugs were in fact minors getting drugs mailed to their parents house? To say that selling drugs is a victimless crime is way to broad of a statement in my opinion. Also, what if you were to sell drugs to an anonymous person who used them to take advantage of someone else, is that still kosher?

I don't think this is as black and white as you are making it out to be.

I think there are some things being mixed up here.

Alert, this same argument can be used against the seller of a knife if someone used it to kill with the knife. But you can`t say that the knife seller is doing something morally wrong, unless maybe he tampered with the knife and made it knowingly less safe, for profits, or whatever.

It is true that anonymous marketplaces as this can have problems such as minors going there, or people who get substances they are not ready to take, not respecting dosage/set/setting, etc. We here prefer as much as possible to grow one`s own plants or harvesting sustainably, home extractions and personal use, and taking care that people being introduced to substances are informed and will take care of preparations. But fact is that people will use drugs, whether they are legal or illegal, and such things as silk roads or mexican cartels are a direct result of prohibition, whose defenders are the real criminal in my view.