SIlkroad 2.0 down

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RTrain

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http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/securit...silk-road-2-0-operator-blake-benthall-n242751

FBI Arrests Alleged 'Silk Road 2.0' Operator Blake Benthall
FBI agents arrested alleged "Silk Road 2.0" owner and operator Blake Benthall in San Francisco on Wednesday, the bureau's New York field office announced.

The FBI is accusing Benthall, 26, of running the online "black-market bazaar" where anonymous users can trade illegal drugs and services. The hidden marketplace operates on what's called the "Deep Web," accessible only through special software. The FBI shut down the original Silk Road about one year ago, and Silk Road 2.0 sprung up just five weeks later in November 2013.

The FBI's complaint against Benthall alleges he took control of the marketplace in late December under the moniker "Defcon." Benthall has owned and operated Silk Road ever since, the FBI alleges.

Benthall is charged on multiple counts, according to the FBI, including conspiring to commit narcotics trafficking. If convicted, that charge alone carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison. The other charges are related to alleged computer hacking, trafficking in fraudulent IDs, and money laundering.

Benthall is expected to appear in federal court in San Francisco later on Thursday. It was not immediately clear who would represent him.

As of September 2014, Silk Road 2.0 had about 150,000 active users and about $8 million in monthly sales, the FBI said.

"Let’s be clear -- this Silk Road, in whatever form, is the road to prison," U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara said in a statement. "Those looking to follow in the footsteps of alleged cybercriminals should understand that we will return as many times as necessary to shut down noxious online criminal bazaars. We don’t get tired.”
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I guess another one bites the dust on the dark web. I also read something on reddit about DEA and the European equaivalent to it possibly conducting some big operation to crackdown on these "marketplaces", but that's all speculative info at best. I guess if you hear about more being seized in the short future then we will know.

I am not too sure about these sites and which if this one was anything near the level of the original big one with a quite similar name. But this is obviously the one that drew the most attention because of its name, which stands to reason why it was brought down the quickest. Or at least you'd figure that it had the biggest target on it. Which makes me wonder why the individual named in the article, who allegedly ran the site, used a name that would automatically draw the DEA's attention. I guess from a marketing standpoint you are capitalizing on the success of the predecessor, but hard to say if its a justifiable risk/reward situation.

edit: btw sorry the title of the thread is a bit misleading, maybe it should "down and out", haha. But, my bad because a site just being down and being seized by the FBI is somewhat different.
 
About 50 million Americans live below the poverty line and this is what we are wasting federal resources on. Fuck the FBI and the DEA. It's only a matter of time before renegade revolutionaries ala the Weathermen or Timothy McVey start targeting these corrupt, disgusting agencies and I, for one, can't wait. Considering the amount of lives they've ruined, not a single agent is innocent.
 
Ehh there just playing whack a mole at this point. Someone will step up and replace this guy. There's too much money involved for it not to happen. Online drugs are the future.
 
Preet Bharara said:
Let’s be clear -- this Silk Road, in whatever form, is the road to prison. Those looking to follow in the footsteps of alleged cybercriminals should understand that we will return as many times as necessary to shut down noxious online criminal bazaars. We don’t get tired.
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Let me be clear -- you're a tyrant.

You, and your predecessors have been wasting enormous amounts of tax payer money in order to fund your adrenaline junkie cat and mouse game.

The way in which you located Silk Road 1.0's servers was apparently unlawful. And the same is probably true for 2.0. What say you about this?

You probably consume alcoholic beverages, and perhaps even tobacco/nicotine products. If this is indeed the case, it would make you a hypocrite, and, would be very ironic if it ends up contributing to - or being responsible for - your death.

People like you are the reason why America has slowly descended into chaos.

People like you are the reason why law enforcement has become more and more militarized.

People like you are the reason more and more of us don't trust police officers anymore, let alone can't stand them / you.

You are prosecuting non-violent and otherwise law abiding Americans because they wish to temporarily intoxicate themselves in order to achieve a state of euphoria. There is no victim here, which makes you look incredibly stupid. And if anything, you have victimized a man or woman for a something as benign as parts of a plant.

I'm sure Silk Road 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, and up, and up are already being worked on by someone. There's just too much money in it for them - it's worth the risk, although they know it could end in death or life in prison for them.

This has gone on for far too long - 43+ years now. And if you aren't tired of ruining lives because of a plant, powder, pill, et cetera, then you are a goon in uniform, and a disgrace to freedom and liberty. And I hope that justice will be served especially in your case.

You're all a bunch of leeches and homewreckers who only know how to take, take, and take.

You exploit asset forfeiture laws to the point where it becomes a cruel joke for the people you have victimized.

You've done so much, SO MUCH untold damage domestically, and abroad - directly, and indirectly.

So many lives ruined, because of YOU - not the drugs! And for this reason, you all deserve to be rotting away in prison for life.

I really hope you feel like a parasitic piece of shit for all the suffering you and your ilk have needlessly caused.
 
I don't even understand how the war on drugs could still possibly exist, its been lost a million times over and they keep wasting money trying to prevent sociological evolution.
What is happening must happen, the people deserve access to clean drugs from the comfort of their homes.

The road will be back up in a few weeks max and everything will continue, just a loss of government money and a ruined life for a young entrepreneur.
 
I wonder how long it will take until a cartel or mafia group begins running a dark web marketplace, honestly I'm surprised they haven't tried yet already.
It would be much harder to catch if they aren't operating directly out of America, which is honestly the stupidest idea.
 
.:Holy::Toast:. said:
I wonder how long it will take until a cartel or mafia group begins running a dark web marketplace, honestly I'm surprised they haven't tried yet already.
It would be much harder to catch if they aren't operating directly out of America, which is honestly the stupidest idea.
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Admittedly, if someone would have told me that Silk Road 1.0's servers were located in America, I'd have thought they were on crack. Then that Dread Pirate guy got busted somewhere in California and I was shocked.

I mean, at the least the first time around, wouldn't you least expect such servers to be located in the US of all places? I would - the first time around. Maybe I'm just an idiot :sus:

Edit - I would have thought such servers would have been located in a country located in Europe which isn't part of the European Union, such as Ukraine. Boy was I wrong.
 
According to the FBI's complaint, an undercover Homeland Security Investigations agent was able to infiltrate the Silk Road 2.0 support staff. The agent was therefore able to gain access to private sections of the website and communicate regularly with "Defcon."
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Scary
 
mister said:
Scary
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This is the type of shit that makes me want to pull my hair out. Let me get this straight. The government-sanctioned gangs like ICE, the FBI and the DEA who are A-okay with one of their agents infiltrateing a crime-related organization and taking their secrets but when it's Edward Snowden exposing the war crimes of the US government, the same people are calling for his execution. The fucking hypocrisy! Get pissed, people!
 
Defcon wasnt the smartest cookie it seems......

-SR2 has been compromised since the very first day, at the drawing board step.
-Blake Benthall, aka "Defcon", also lived in the USA.
-he logged as defcon on his personnal computer
-he registered the silkroad servers using his real email, which was actually his entire name.
-he bought 270,000$ worth of luxuries from cash exchanged from bitcoin on public exchanges using his own ID in the 2 first months of SR.
-physicial surveillance from his house matched the conection times of Defcon and massive tor usage
-he accessed some silkroad server functionalities and did silkroad-related bitcoin transactions on a normal browser

http://www.scribd.com/doc/245744857/Blake-Benthall-Criminal-Complaint
 
People will just move the business elsewhere. That's pretty much what happened when SR1 went down and the refugee vendors/users went to Black Market Reloaded. Until that folded and people went to SR2. Wack a mole indeed.

And lol at "we don't get tired". Of course you don't, you get to work with a bloated warchest of a budget to prosecute victimless "crimes", why would you get tired
 
On the bright side:

imrs.php


U.S. - The FBI promises a perpetual, futile drug war as it shuts down Silk Road 2.0
Christopher Ingraham
The Washington Post
November 6th, 2014

Today, the FBI seized the Darknet market Silk Road 2.0 and arrested its alleged operator, Blake Benthall. The former SpaceX employee now faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years for "conspiring to commit narcotics trafficking," and could end up behind bars for the rest of this life.

The website DeepDotWeb has confirmed that two other Darknet markets, Hydra and Cloud 9, have also been seized by the FBI. But the remaining Darknet markets -- and there are a lot of them -- appear to be functioning normally.

It's possible other markets may come down soon, or that they are already under the control of the FBI. But if this latest operation is restricted to just the three sites named above, it would affect only a fraction - anywhere from a quarter to a third - of total Darknet commerce.

In August of this year, the group Digital Citizens' Alliance issued a report on the size of Darknet markets, including the number of items for sale on each. All told, Silk Road 2.0, Hydra and Cloud 9 accounted for roughly 20,000 out of 66,000 listings, including drugs and other items.

Silk Road 2.0 is the largest of the three seized sites, but a recent story by The Economist suggest that its overall Darknet market share has shrunk since August. It's also very likely that a number of other Darknet markets have sprung up since then, and that the existing markets have boosted the number of items for sale.
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Read the full story here.
 
mister said:
Defcon wasnt the smartest cookie it seems......

-SR2 has been compromised since the very first day, at the drawing board step.
-Blake Benthall, aka "Defcon", also lived in the USA.
-he logged as defcon on his personnal computer
-he registered the silkroad servers using his real email, which was actually his entire name.
-he bought 270,000$ worth of luxuries from cash exchanged from bitcoin on public exchanges using his own ID in the 2 first months of SR.
-physicial surveillance from his house matched the conection times of Defcon and massive tor usage
-he accessed some silkroad server functionalities and did silkroad-related bitcoin transactions on a normal browser

http://www.scribd.com/doc/245744857/Blake-Benthall-Criminal-Complaint
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Yeah it sounds like this guy was incredibly foolish in how he attempted this... I'm trying to balance that against the fact that he was simultaneously working for SpaceX and running SR2.0.. guess he bit off far more than he shoulda..

subotai said:
bitches cant even agora
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earlier today (on reddit) people were saying that pretty much any 'known' markets are down.. have you tried others? Someone said a list of sites that were down (including agora) and it listed most of the sites i'd heard of :\



It's almost funny, if this were a laughing matter, that the kid saw ulbricht fail, and then just proceeded to try and take his place while employing worse practices than taylor did originally SMH!!
 
[I misunderstood what i'd read about sites being down.. the two posts were:
[–]BJ2K 2 points 6 hours ago

If you read the article you would see: "Almost all of the deep web’s major drug marketplaces are offline, raising the possibility that the FBI has caused severe disruption to the online drug trade. Agora, Alpaca, BlueSky, C9, Hyrda, Pandora, and the Silk Road are all currently offline."

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[–]Ididpotato 9 points 6 hours ago

Thats just the article.

I'm reading here a few are offline but my no means most and certainly not "Almost all"

http://www.deepdotweb.com/2014/11/06/silk-road-2-seized/
]
 
Well, back to questionnable quality stuff. On SR at least I had a rough idea about how much is on the blotter.
 
Some people, such as those who comprise the DEA, will stop at nothing to make sure their fellow man doesn't get high.
 
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