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Alleged Dark Web Kingpin Doxed Himself With His Personal Hotmail Address (vice.com)
Joseph Cox, reporting for Motherboard: On Thursday, US authorities announced the seizure of the largest dark web marketplace AlphaBay. Europol and Dutch police also claimed seizure of Hansa, another popular market. In their dark web investigations, law enforcement have increasingly turned to hacking tools, including the deployment of browser exploits on a mass scale. But tracking down the alleged AlphaBay administrator was much more mundane, officials said. Alexandre Cazes, who US authorities say used the handle alpha02 as administrator of the site, allegedly left his personal email in a welcome message to new AlphaBay members, according to the forfeiture complaint published on Thursday. The news echoes the arrest of Ross Ulbricht, the convicted creator of the original Silk Road, who made a similar security mistake. "In December 2016, law enforcement learned that CAZES' personal email was included in the header of AlphaBay's 'welcome email' to new users in December 2014," the complaint reads. Users received this message once they signed up to AlphaBay's forum and entered an email address. Cazes' email address -- Pimp_Alex_91@hotmail.com -- was also included in the header of the AlphaBay forum password recovery process, the complaint adds. From there, investigators found the address was linked to an Alexandre Cazes, and discovered his alleged front company, EBX Technologies.
Enough said.
He used the same email address in his LinkdIn profile.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
His laptop wasn't encrypted, he had a file listing all his accounts (including bank accounts) and passwords, and he bought real estate and fancy cars under his name, as well as spending 2 million Euros to try to buy a property in Cypress to get citizenship there. And that's only the beginning.
He had been using that same email address for personal stuff for years, including as the email address for his business
And just in case you had any doubt that this was not a criminal mastermind at work, Cazes had also used his Pimp Alex Hotmail address as well as an email address from his own business – EBX Technologies – to set up online bank accounts and crypto-currency accounts. How did law enforcement know that Cazes was behind EBX Technologies? It was on his LinkedIn profile.
This is a guy who sold fake identities; he should have eaten his own dog food.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Dupes for those that don't RTFA? Or is to that slow a news day?
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Agreed, but when first starting, that's a bit of a harder task... and clearly the damage was already done.
Your average email service is going to want a phone # or other email address to create one... and quite a few look for easy to forge spoof ones.
Hell, most burner phones want you to sign up with an account which ask for the same thing.
It's a chicken and egg problem which risks leaving too much info around if you aren't very very careful... and even if you think you are, you may not be careful/paranoid enough.
Can you buy legal stuff on these sites? Or only illegal crap. I'd buy just to avoid Amazon tax.
You'd think these people would have a clue that there are going to be powerful people with a great deal of resources doing everything possible to track them down. Perhaps some sort of impairment was involved?
Oh, well, to quote Law Dog, "Are you listening? Quit guinea-pigging the product. Seriously."
He was using hotmail. It's not like it's hard to create a disposable email account elsewhere instead.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
So, I get that this guy didn't think through how not to get caught. But, doesn't it make the FBI's job harder in the future by broadcasting, "Hey, here's the stupid things he did that made it easy to catch him?"
For you see, it was really I, the Anonymous Coward who created the site, and used him as a patsy.
Join me in next marketplace, the Mormugao through the even Darker Web. Get all your prescription medication at half the price of even Canada.
Parellel Construction
Who doubts this??
Parallel Construction !!!!!
Opsec is hard.
It's harder if your stupid.
-- John Wayne
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Ironic, no?
I'm the same AC as who replied with the above.
While it was a bit different then... try to create a Hotmail account which cannot be eventually traced to you.
Yes, you can go create another disposable email address elsewhere... just because you have one doesn't mean it's going to be enough to get through the verification of a Hotmail account or another service.
I've a friend at Microsoft whose job (in part) is making it as difficult as can be for ill-legitimate account signups and hopefully drive you to another service for your account... other services have a similar mentality. As a result, some services have higher reputational services than others which impacts later usage.
I like the name. Although the name also suggests an almost monk-like existence for the members of that network, with minimum contact to locals. And helps the police to limit their investigation to certain countries..
now with no markets and that tumor thingy in grandpas coconut they are going to have to call hilldawg again if they want some good old stingers
Ross Ulbricht did not "make a similar security mistake". His VPN provider was subpoenaed. Why is this article claiming otherwise?
It's John Wayne, what did you expect?
Well his first issue was that he was using hotmail.
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
Ok, this guy was exceptionally stupid, or maybe he got arrogant over time, whatever. But there's a lesson to be learned here: Anonymity is actually hard.
Here, and on most sites, I use my real identity. On some sites, I post under a pseudonym with its own email address. For me, it's not critical, but I still try to keep the pseudonym separate. It's a lot harder than you suppose - it's easy to mix the two identities. If privacy were a serious concern, it would be essential to always use proxies for the pseudonym, so that IP addresses wouldn't match, and to never use those (same) proxies for my normal identity. Always use a different machine, with a different hardware and browser fingerprint (or a VM).
If you haven't tried something like this, you should. And consider: it takes exactly one mistake, and you have doxxed yourself.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
What a fucking dumbass.
Or just "borrow" a legit email account. It's not that hard. Ask any spammer. And it's not hard to get a burner phone. My current smartphone and my previous phone are both burners.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
He should have just hijacked an AOL account :-)
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Is there anyone here (an anon please!) who received this supposed welcome email and can post the headers for us to see? Or are we supposed to take LEA's word for it? How would none of the thousands of Alphabay members not have noticed this email address and doxxed him earlier? Color me skeptical.
That's OK as long as you turn it off before you get near home or your workplace or anywhere with CCTV.
Penis mightier than the sword.
I didn't buy them specifically to be untraceable, it just worked out that way. The government certainly knows my phone number - I use it for government forms, health care, voting registration, tax forms, etc. I have no problem not being anonymous. Anyone who thinks that they are anonymous on the net is probably a fool. Some of the bigger ones will do like Alexandre Cazes did - voluntarily elect to collect his Darwin Award rather than face the music.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.