Silk Road Shut Down, Founder Arrested, $3.6 Million Worth of Bitcoin Seized

New submitter u38cg writes Ross William Ulbricht, known as 'Dread Pirate Roberts,' was arrested in San Francisco yesterday and has been charged with one count each of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy, according to a court filing. Silk Road has been shut down and some $3.6m in Bitcoin (26,000 Btc) seized. The question is — how?" onyxruby submitted a link to the criminal complaint (PDF; coral cache might work better). The court filing indicates that they seized the actual servers and recovered their contents, making numerous references to the private messaging system. Also according to the court filing, the Silk Road was used to sell ~$1.2 billion in illicit goods since being founded in 2011.

Comments

Tor compromised

[MetalliQaZ]

I think it can be argued that Silk Road practiced the use of Tor as well as anyone could have. They still got pinched. Although it may come out that an insider turned informant, it seems that the Tor system is compromised by the snoops.

Re:Tor compromised

[Anonymous Coward]

*(Maybe. We don't know really.)

Silk Road, however, is exceptionally well known as an illicit enterprise, so despite anonymity of packet data (or not...) they're targeted anyway.

If known to be engaging in criminal activity, Tor is not really going to save you or be the critical flaw in your plan, either.

Re:Tor compromised

[Dunbal]

it seems that the Tor system is compromised by the snoops.

The safest option is to assume that EVERYTHING is compromised nowadays. Your OS. Your security certificate server. Your ISP. Your VPN. SSL. Your webcam. Everything.

Re:Tor compromised

[TheSpoom]

Wait, so after all the NSA bullshit, he was caught by Canada? Oh, the irony.

Re:Tor compromised

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a surprise, they routinely open whatever packages the NSA tells them to.

Re:Tor compromised

[kermidge]

From reading an article on this before coming here, I'm still flabbergasted that he was using servers in the U.S. Color me naive but I don't see where that made sense.

Second thing, after reading more, is why the blazes did he have anything to do with SR sent directly to himself?

I realize 20-20 hindsight and all, but c'mon, seems to me that's all 'security 101' stuff, no?

Re:Tor compromised

[Anonymous Coward]

What we can learn from this as well as history, is they can take down the silk road site all they want, there will be 5 more to take its place and learn from its mistakes before you can say drug war.

Even after all these years I find it hard to accept that so many people have a problem with people they don't even know doing things they never would have heard about had it not been for the theft and abuse of their own rights and money. Strange world we live in...

Re:Tor compromised

[ancientt]

He promoted the website using his real name attached to a gmail account with his real name as part of the address. They may not have found that out until they were ready to make a bigger case against him, but as I was reading the criminal complaint and saw that, I was dumbfounded that anyone could actually be that dense about security. Reading an older article, I see where he was asked if he was worried about law-enforcement agencies trying to track him down. He said "I have confidence in our security measures."

Re:HOW??

[i kan reed]

Or more specifically, monitoring known(or complicit) tor entry nodes, looking for quantity of activity corresponding to activity by roberts, back tracking to the origin IP address, getting a warrant for a full-on-monitoring of that address, verifying their target, then going for a bust.

Encryption and anonymyzing technology only works in as much as no one with any resources actively wants to figure out who you are. You might be able to hide your message, but you'll never hide your existence.

Re:HOW??

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. NSA -> FBI -> Parallel Construction Filter -> Arrest.

Tor was not designed to protect against an adversary that has a global view of all traffic.

DEA & parallel construction?

[Valdrax]

Wait, so after all the NSA bullshit, he was caught by Canada? Oh, the irony.

Welllll, maybe...

Do you remember the recent stories about the DEA and "parallel construction," where the DEA was getting phone records from the NSA and then using them to identify suspects from which they could reverse engineer a false "lead" to let the police just happen to find other incriminating evidence to build a case on?

I'm not saying that's clearly what happened here, but as others have pointed out, it's a distinct possibility given that drugs are involved.

Re:HOW??

[Hatta]

What value does law and order have to the slave? Law and order is nothing more than a tool, and when that tool is wielded by evil, it serves evil. A society where injustice is enforced by the government and cheered on by patriots is no society that is worth having.

Think about it, if you were the slave in your scenario, would you really care that an abolitionist had counterfeited currency? Hell no! If you thought that counterfeiting would lead to your freedom, I bet you would run the presses yourself.