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Silk Road 2.0 Seized By FBI, Alleged Founder Arrested In San Francisco
blottsie writes The FBI has arrested the online persona "Defcon," identified as Blake Benthall, a 26-year-old in San Francisco, who the agency claims ran the massive online black market Silk Road 2.0. Benthall's FBI arrest comes a year after that of Ross Ulbricht, also from San Francisco, who's the alleged mastermind of the original Silk Road and still awaiting trial. The largest of those reported down is Silk Road 2.0. But a host of smaller markets also seized by law enforcement include Appaca, BlueSky, Cloud9, Hydra, Onionshop, Pandora, and TheHub. Also at Ars Technica.
Really, a second fool resides in the US while running an illegal operation? Go ahead, wave a red cape at the bull, but don't cry when it gores you.
Who is still using these sites after all of the Silk Road 1.0 arrests? You have to be pretty dumb to risk your freedom on some stranger's computer security skills.
If money is being transferred electronically, it can be traced back to you. That's the weakness of all illegal online marketplaces.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Don't abuse the people. Clearly a large number of people want this service no matter the risk. There will be plenty of others ready to fill the void.
>1. Tor is not as secure as everybody says it is (because _____ insert your favourite conspiracy theory/security failure here).
It is. We know it is from the Ross Ulbricht case. They posed as a vendors and customers and sent malware to the browsers at the other end. Tor might be fine as an intermediate, but the endpoints are leaky as hell if you don't act with great caution.
>2. NSA/GCHQ, etc... justification for snooping on everyone (terrorists! drugs! guns!) is just complete and utter bull****. Hard detective work pays every time, and is probably more cost-effective than the massive surveillance and privacy violations we have right now.
We know it is. Parallel construction is well documented.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
You can't win the WoD--the Jyhad is eternal.
You act as if that law was a natural one, imposed by nature itself. Which are by definition also the only laws you can neither break nor change.
Just because something is the law doesn't make it automatically right. Human laws don't define what is right. Only what is legal.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Heh, people tell me all the time that I have 'delusions of grandeur,' but they are a bunch of nobodies and who cares what they think.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
These free trade sites will keep popping up as fast as they are shutdown. The government's position that unrestricted trade is dangerous is untenable.
This is the reason why we can't have anything nice. Is because their are too many jerks out there who will use a new technology as a way to do illegal activities!
How is Silk Road infringing on your ability to do anything? 90% of the activity on Silk Road are private transactions between consenting adults for things that should have never been illegal in the first place. The way to have less crime, is to criminalize fewer things.
It's completely possible.
Ulbricht was not very smart. He bought fake IDs off his own website and had them shipped to his actual home address. The IDs were intercepted in the mail. and this clued the FBI in on his activities. Then he managed his servers using a direct VPN connection. Once the FBI traced the VPN endpoint he was done. They coerced the hosting company to allow them access and they could collect all the information they needed to build a case from that point on.
I imagine this Defcon guy did something similarly dumb.
To do this right:
1. Find a VM hosting company offshore that accepts bitcoins and doesn't ask for identity. 2. Buy some bitcoins, use one of the many tumbler services to wash them, and pay for the services that way 3. Never manage or otherwise connect to your VM directly. Always use TOR. SSH works great over TOR. 4. Don't buy shit off your own website and have it shipped to your damn house.
Just finished reading the affidavit from the FBI. This guy was a dumbass. He used a gmail account to pay for the VPS service and used his home internet connection to connect to the gmail account. He used his own, hotel, and relatives internet connections to connect to the hosting provider without any sort of anonymizing service. The FBI used either an undercover agent or a confidential informant to eventually find the VPS provider. From there, he was quite easy to track. The FBI had been watching the guy for months. The affidavit suggested it was an undercover agent that was hired as a staff member on the website that lead to this case being cracked open.
MDMA is relatively benign and no one is overdosing on it. What you do increasingly see is people overdosing on what they think is MDMA because it's not as readily available now thanks to law enforcement.
http://www.theguardian.com/pol...
A complete lack of victims other than self does bloody goddam well make it not wrong, however.