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'Silk Road Reloaded' Launches On a Network More Secret Than Tor

Posted by timothy on from the ok-but-is-it-better? dept.

rossgneumann writes A new anonymous online drug market has emerged, but instead of using the now infamous Tor network, it uses the lesser known "I2P" alternative. "Silk Road Reloaded" launched yesterday, and is only accessible by downloading the special I2P software, or by configuring your computer in a certain way to connect to I2P web pages, called 'eepsites', and which end in the suffix .i2p. The I2P project site is informative, as is the Wikipedia entry.

7 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. Infamous Tor Network? by hodet · · Score: 2, Insightful

    One crappy drug site and the whole Tor network is now infamous.

    1. Re:Infamous Tor Network? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It wasn't one crappy drug site, but yes the prominent "dark web" front leader is as a result infamous. There are plenty of innocent and justified uses for systems like tor, but for the average person associates tor with drugs by mail, child porn and murder for hire thanks to the media.

    2. Re:Infamous Tor Network? by Great+Big+Bird · · Score: 4, Insightful

      How would you do a traffic study on a network that is encrypted or otherwise as private as it is?

    3. Re:Infamous Tor Network? by rmstar · · Score: 4, Insightful

      here are plenty of innocent and justified uses for systems like tor, but for the average person associates tor with drugs by mail, child porn and murder for hire thanks to the media.

      Truth be told, it's not the media. We live in a world that is far freer than many would like to acknowledge, and for most purposes tor is a hassle or pointless. The end result is that tor is mostly only used when there is a very good reason for it, and since we live in fairly free society, that reason tends to be stuff that gives tor a bad reputation.

      There is also this paradoxon that, if we lived in a society where tor would make a difference, tor would most likely not exist or be useless. This is the situation in Saudi Arabia and other similar places. This is so because the real weakness of tor is that, since it is not possible to hide the exit or entry nodes themselves, the network is easy to shut down or to filter out.

    4. Re:Infamous Tor Network? by rot26 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "There was a study done recently" that shows anything you want it to.

      --



      To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
    5. Re:Infamous Tor Network? by Immerman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Bit of cognitive dissonance there. Even if the overwhelming majority of usage really is for nefarious purposes, that still implies a non-negligible minority of usage for legitimate purposes. That's not "in theory", that's in practice.

      Couple that with the fact that I suspect such claims of "overwhelming majority" are looking at bandwidth, and porn is liable to be much more bandwidth-intensive than accessing information suppressed by oppressive regimes, and you could end up with a very different picture.

      But hey, stamping out kiddie-porn is a much bigger priority than coordinating people fighting against oppressive governments that would casually murder those children instead, right?

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
  2. Re: Copping by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That involves:
    - Leaving your basement
    - Knowing what areas to go/people to ask
    - Having a network of real world friends who can point you to the above
    - Having a basic level of street smarts and socialisation to reduce your chances of being scammed/robbed/murdered/busted by cops
    - Not being shit scared of approaching people who could personally harm you

    You may think the above isn't such a big deal, but to a large number of people to whom silkroad etc appeals, it is as daunting to them as setting up an encrypted currency exchange network and hidden virtualised proxy server that can withstand attacks from both law enforcement and the online equivalent of your local gangland thugs is to you.