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Silk Road Journal Found On Ulbricht's Laptop: "Everyone Knows Too Much"
sarahnaomi writes On Wednesday, prosecutors in the Silk Road trial began to lay out the wealth of evidence found on the laptop taken from accused kingpin Ross Ulbricht in a San Francisco library in October 2013. The evidence presented by prosecutor Timothy Howard was the most comprehensive and damning thus far, including more than a thousand pages of chats between the site's pseudonymous operator Dread Pirate Roberts and Silk Road administrators. Also entered into evidence was a journal that dates back to at least 2010 describing the creation and operation of the site. FBI computer scientist Thomas Kiernan, the second witness in the trial, testified about the day Ulbricht was arrested and the evidence gathered from his laptop.
So not only could he not secure his black site, he couldn't even secure the files on his own laptop.
It makes you wonder how he ever got it running in the first place.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Mental note: When establishing a questionably legal site for definitely illegal transactions to be made through, don't keep any logs about it, nor your conversations regarding it.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I mean, I work in tech support and im sure ive added comments to at least two or three tickets about how "everyone knows too much" Or maybe he was a wikipedia moderator?
Good people go to bed earlier.
No, the very first lesson of Criminal 101 is always operate under the assumption that you will be caught.
Isn't it the first thing they teach you in Criminal 101: Don't keep a journal!
It just shows what happens when you take drugs: you end up losing interest in your education and dropping out, just before you get to the part of your Criminal 101 class that you really needed. Here's the transcript:
Dear Diary,
Criminal 101 class was really, really, boring today. I don't know how much longer I can take it. We learned about a bunch of junk about how not to leave fingerprints and how to wipe a hard drive. Duh - everybody knows that. When are we gonna learn something really useful?... I think I'll just drop out.
your friend,
Ross
It was obvious he did not understand the encryption.
On the seller side of the site there was a place to put your pgp public key. That way customers could grab it and encrypt there communication to you. I never understood why he did not configure the site to auto encrypt all messages to you with your public key. That way all the seller/buyer communications, stored on the system, would have been secured. I even submitted it to SR and got no response.
That was when I decided to move on and stop selling on the site.
It was encrypted. And seized while he was logged in and active.
Initial analysis was done before the laptop was allowed to shut down.
The feds may be cavalier about laws, but it's a mistake to think they are stupid.
Yea, but know all the folks actually majoring in Crime, just copy their answers off the Criminology major in the front of the room who is just taking class as an elective. The Crime students never do the reading...
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
While a lot of people are jumping on the "..it wasn't encrypted.." "..FBI grabbed it while he was logged in.."
You are missing the point.
Step 1) NEVER carry incriminating evidence with you. Encrypted or not.
2) use a VPN/SSH Tunnel/etc (and/or both) to connect to the server where your data is. (make sure that server is located in a non-extraditing country, and filtered from you by a few shell companies)
3) keep an absurdly low 'idle-timeout' on your ssh sessions
4) use a dead-mans switch on that servers encrypted data
(i.e. run command "I_am_not_in_jail_yet.sh" every 15minutes.) {be more vague then this*}
5) ALWAYS assume that your local system is compromised. (boot/run from a read-only media)
6) don't brag about it! If more then 1 person knows; then your secret is not safe.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Isn't it the first thing they teach you in Criminal 101: Don't keep a journal!
Possibly, but in Criminal 504 (Profiting in the Long Term) they teach you KEEP a journal so you can write a fully revealing book later.
He may go to jail for a bit, but he can profit afterward - just hope he had the journal backed up somewhere they could not reach it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The FBI may not be all up to date on the latest technologies and they aren't great at dealing with things purely in the digital world. However they are one of, if not the best investigative organizations in the world. They have a lot of experience investigating crimes of all kinds, often committed by experienced criminal organizations that are quite clever.
So there's a good chance if they are interested in getting you, they will. They are quite literally professionals at it, and they institutionally learn from their experience. You very well may know a lot more about computers than they do, but they almost certainly know way more about criminal investigations than you do.
I hope they never examine all the stuff I've saved on my PC and posted on line.
-- Signed,
Walter Mitty.
Have gnu, will travel.
If I were going to create an underground illegal drug black market, don't keep a journal and detailed notes that can easily be recovered by investigators.
"Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead."
~ Benjamin Franklin
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Dear Diary,
Today I learned that I'm not so bricht after all and changed my name accordingly.
your friend,
Ross Ul
This is not the sig you're looking for.
Every time /. has news on someone, who has committed [cyber]crime, the comments read like from ask.slashdot.org article "I would like to set up a criminal enterprise online. Any helpful tips?"
As per all "ask /." articles, most comments are borderline manslplaining (meaning, author has no experience in the field, has idea what he is talking about, but somehow it makes sense in his head and he is happy to share it). As in all diverse communities, some try to suggest that this is a bad idea and shouldn't be attempted in the first place. Such suggestions are soon thwarted with detailed explanations, why it is [a good idea|ethical|for the common good].
This sort of entertainment is why I keep reading Shashdot. Keep up the good work.
Right in that yes, they already have a lot of evidence, and are just working to seal the deal. They like to have everything in a row and an overwhelming amount of evidence before going to trial.
Wrong about the contempt thing. If you look it up in the US you find out that the courts have decided the 5th amendment applies to passwords. So you can keep your mouth shut and they can't compel you to hand over a password. If it is locked with something physical like a key fob or fingerprint, that you have to hand over. Basically if something is solely in your mind, they can't compel you to hand that over if it can be used against you.
He may well have been as smart as he thought (I'm not saying that is the case for sure, mind) but turns out others were smart enough, and more knowledgeable in the ways that mattered.
Hans Reiser is a good example. Man is unquestionably very smart. However, he had the geek hubris that I call SMFU, Smartest Motherfucker in the Universe syndrome. He figured he was so much smarter than everyone else, he could easily get away with his crime. Turns out that the police have some smart people too, and those people know a lot more about criminal investigation than he did.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
What are you? 10?
The point of having the journal would not be for evidence the resulting book was real, it would be simply to have vast amount of source material to create a book from more quickly, so you could have a book ready sooner after trial.
He could presumably re-create most of the information from memory, but memory is fickle and it would take a lot more time to get it out.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yea, but know all the folks actually majoring in Crime, just copy their answers off the Criminology major in the front of the room who is just taking class as an elective. The Crime students never do the reading...
Which is why they're the ones who get caught! ;)