FBI raids alleged online drug market Silk Road, arrests owner

token901 said:
Quote from SR fourm :

"PLUTOPETE HAS BEEN RAIDED MOVE YOUR DRUGS AND REPLACE YOUR HARD DRIVES THIS INCLUDES ANY VENDORSA WHO HAVE PLACED ORDERS IN THE LAST 24HRS AS THEY HAVE A BAG OF HIS ORDERS "

He was UK vendor.
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Apparently, he was not very smart or cautious in the first place.

"After the SR bust in October 2013, a UK vendor of accessories like packaging, plutopete, reported he had been raided & questioned but not charged."

http://www.gwern.net/Silk Road

Or maybe that is what it is in reference too... who knows.
 
phactor said:
Pretty sure they were expecting this, also likely know about other markets as well. Not much of a "Fuck You" to be honest.
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Well it is really, just shoves it more in there face that the idea is out there now, and theres a huge market. Just another re-occurring effort in the "war on drugs" that will never be won...
 
Which Pirate is that?

Last week, Silk Road spokesman Dread Pirate Roberts broke a longstanding silence, granting an interview to Andy Greenberg of Forbes magazine. In it, he finally admitted Silk Road’s worst-kept secret – the person posting as Dread Pirate Roberts and steering the ship was not the same person who founded Silk Road.
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This came as no surprise whatsoever to regulars on the Silk Road forums. The bigger questions are: which number is this particular DPR? How many people now post from the DPR forum account? And are they merely PR people rather than the owner of the site?

In short, I believe this is incarnation No.3 or possibly No.4. There is no doubt there’s more than one person using the DPR forum account and it is unlikely any of them are the owner(s) of the Silk Road site.
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Cont with updated reply (the original article was from Aug) from Eiley (all things vice) in the comments section below the article (last comment).

http://allthingsvice.com/2013/08/26/which-pirate-is-that/
 
I know from past SR forum browsing that AUS has extremely thorough import checks. Many vendors stopped selling/shipping their products to Australian buyers because of this (the packages were intercepted on too many occasions). I can only imagine how frustrating that must have been (many Aussie buyers lost a lot of money).
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I don't know, i've read someplace that only approx 5% of drugs get detected. But when the order is from some certain countries I am pretty sure they check them more, ie brazil or amsterdam or holland or the netherlands and places like that. I wouldn't put it past some Aussies to say their packages got intercepted when they really got them as well. lol
 
tyrael said:
A few good points! Are 2046 bit encryption utilised "residentially"? There are encryption algorithms which the Government prevents the use of (assumingly for cases such as these - the possibility of cracking the encrypted data).
)
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I don't think anybody uses 2046 bit encryption. 2048 on the other hand...
 
Mendo_K said:
Well it is really, just shoves it more in there face that the idea is out there now, and theres a huge market. Just another re-occurring effort in the "war on drugs" that will never be won...
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Ummm.. when police take out "street level" operations they know they are not ending the trade... just disrupting it. Same case here.
I know SR was sold as this new idea, and in some ways it was. However, drugs have been mailed and sold over the internet for a long time; In fact, they were mailed via the postal system before the internet. Just had to make face to face connects "on tour" for example. People selling MDMA while legal had 1800 numbers. GHB was advertised in high times mag etc etc.
 
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I feel really sorry for that poor, young lad. He's only 29. He got swept away by this SanFran start-up wave, and off he went, suddenly finding himself on a motherfuckin big wave. And we all know that those waves hit hardest and move fastest, and before you know, you're momentarily peering over a 400ft drop and WHOoooosh! There he went - no one to help him as he fell. No time to learn, to gain experience, to become wise, to get on his feet and try again. Fuck! He didn't even get chance to enjoy the fruits of his success. 29 years old. Fuck!

But, like CS Lewis said: "Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement." And Mr. Ulbricht, you are one historic finger post on one historic road.

The hits though, that was a shatty thing to do. :(
 
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After reading all the coverage on the internet as well as reading the various court documents that are available and I have to say...

I have way more respect for the police than Ross Ulbrict (Dead Pirate Roberts). That was some quality high level police work, but none of the techniques they used haven't been used before. He obviously learnt NOTHING from carderplanet being taken down followed by the Darkmarket honeypot (which should be turned into a movie, that was a 'better-than-Hollywood' style investigation. He obviously has NO idea about the FBI/ATF/DEA's long history of success at getting high level, heavily insulated criminal figures on conspiracy to murder charges through posing as hit men (this technique has been used against the Hells Angels, the Bandidos- an entire chapter in Nevada was arrested for conspiracy to murder- the 'Solo Angels' infiltration) as well as staging murders so that they can record the head shot "He needed to die" conversation. The ATF have staged numerous murders- they've staged murders using real corpses, they've sent seized gang patches (presumably from some evidence locker) as 'proof' of a murder occurring.

What Im saying is that American 'federal' LE are no slouches. Silk road was a gob of spit in the face of the DEA and a boot in the bollocks of the judiciary- DPR taunted them publicly, he BEGGED for a major operation to be launched against him. And although the investigation (what has been released so far, I read a 60 page court indictment last night) was executed perfectly they didn't use any 'new' techniques, they used the stock standard tools and techniques they've been using against serious organised crime for the last 30 years.

There are two reasons why Ulbricht went down- One, he was sloppy and left digital fingerprints all over silk road, and although it hasn't been explained yet (that I've read) the servers were obviously nowhere near as secure as he made them out to be...certainly the actual coding of silk road is very crude, 90% of the code is off-the-shelf marketplace software that is kinda old. I wouldn't be surprised if they managed to gain remote root control (thus could effectively clone the workings of the site in real time with root access) of the servers long before they worked out where they were or who was maintaining them.

Secondly- he was a fucking DELUSIONAL IDIOT. He's made several million simply running silk road, but he decides to get involved in high-level trafficking of coke and heroin. Ever heard the expression 'don't shit where you eat'? No, no you haven't motherfucker.

The moral of the story is Breaking Bad/The Sopranos/The Wire/Sons of Anarchy/Whatever are all great TV shows. But they're ENTERTAINMENT not blueprints for how the world works. It really feels like he spent so much time in his room watching the btc moving round and thinking about the drugs being sent around the world while doing bumps of coke and watching breaking bad to the point that he actually BELIEVED that commissioning an UNDERCOVER to torture/murder some random over a tiny amount of money and receiving twitter-style real time torture updates was a GOOD IDEA!?!?! What the fuck?

So to the LE- Bravo, Bravo, I truly tip my hat to the guys and gals that pulled this one off.

And to be honest, silk road needed to die. DPR begged for this to happen with his arrogant pseudo-political bullshit- and turns out he wasn't 10% as clever as he thought he was. This is not the end of buying drugs on the net, it's not the end of silk road clones (I found a new, post-bust, silk road style market that started operating ~20 hours after the arrests were announced. 95% sure it wasn't a scam, most seemed to be refugee SR meth & heroin vendors), it's just the end of the 'honeymoon'.

Did operation Web Trypt kill RCs? No, a few years later Mephedrone hit. Then Methoxetamine. This will clear out a lot of 'casual' users and reduce the popularity of buying drugs online and I don't think that's a bad thing. Less idiots and a fragmentation of the scene (I could see European only/Australia only/etc 'regional' SRs becoming more common, for example, like with RCs) - that's gonna be the main effect of SR closing down.

And for the paranoid- it is very unlikely they will be able to actually analyse the data quickly enough to intercept anything currently in transit, and unless you're a sloppy major vendor or a heroin dealer or something I really won't worry. If you followed the 'rules' and did what everyone tells you to do in the first place you should be fairly secure anyway. And in anycase, you shouldn't do this shit if you can't handle the risk. What, did you actually think that this whole 'drugs on the internet' thing was going to be 110% risk free? If so you should stick to buying off people in person, it's probably safer.
 
but he decides to get involved in high-level trafficking of coke and heroin.
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Did he? I'm not really down on the whole thing and have only glanced over it all in bits and pieces, but I must have missed that bit. I'm not doubting you, since you read it all last night, but that's some stupid shit (if he did start doing that).

As far as the hire to kill part goes there's this site that claims to have spoken to his parents recently and they claim they have evidence against that or something.

I hope this link is ok, as it's not promoting or selling stuff -

https://www.rossulbricht.org/ross-ulbrichts-parents-say-zero-chance-of-murder-for-hire/
 
You know what I find funny? When each and every time a US president speaks on a LIVE tv broadcast and always states that we are "free citizens". America; The Land of The Free. Democracy: Freedom. Every single time without fail...WHAT BULLSHIT. Absolute load of fucking crap. You are not free and your society sucks. Stop bragging that you are all free, when you clearly know...you are not allowed to get high, ahah daddy doesn't want you to. ROFL

I would rather live in Pakistan where they smoke hash freely, or even Iran, where heroin users are tolerated. The US IS NOT FREE. BULLFUCK. You are a society of blind citizens, who thinks New Zealand is in Europe and needs to have a 4 layered burger with extra extra large boom diet coke, lol ahahha. You obesity epidemic is what you should all be scared of, not someone smoking a joint you pieces of self-centered scum. Your society sucks and everyone knows it. Your cops bully drug users. Only your blind citizens "think" your society is free. It is not, stop kidding yourselves.

You FBI, CIA etc have a history peddling drugs. They are also cowards, picking on non-violent drugs dealers. Why don't you stop spraying harmful chemicals on other nations and try to stop ultra-extreme-violent cartels? You weak dogs. Also stop telling other nations to do what you want, just fuck off. The day will come when the world will be free to take what they want into their on bodies, and your "land of freedom and opportunity" will be the odd one out, you dumb, annoying accented pricks. Cowards.

Watch an episode of COPS. That is American society. If drugs were legal, that show would not have enough content to make into a show, you bastard pigs. All you care about is $$ MONEY $$ CAPITALISM $$, greedy profit hungry pricks. DEA useless pricks, one day you job will be obsolete.

You think you can stop this you bitches? You can't. There will be 3 more to the 1 head you chop off you fucks. I hate you American dogs. Stop saying that your land is free when it is CLEARLY NOT. YOU ARE NOT FREE, YOU ARE SLAVE TO MONEY..stop lying to yourselves. Your society is fat, dumb, ignorant, full of colorful marketing and only objective in life is $$$$. FUCK YOU
 
Roger&Me said:
1024 bit is probably routinely and trivially cracked by NSA crypto at this point.
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2046 or higher... you're probably in the clear.
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I mean, you obv need some serious expertise in the cryptography field to make a solid assessment. I don't have that expertise personally. In any case, just wanted to mention that what I've recently read in the computer press (non English language, otherwise I'd provide links right away) is different from your claims.

Based on what I've read, it's my understanding that 1024-bit can probably be broken by the NSA. But it's not a walk in the park and they most likely cannot do it "trivially and routinely" as you suggest. And 2048-bit is considered unbreakable in practice as of today, even for the NSA. (Needless to say, it's even less likely than somebody other than the NSA can do it.)
 
Mailing drugs has been going on forever, Silk-Road was nothing but a glorified anonymous chat-room that connected buyers with sellers, and anyone who buys into Ross Ulbricht's/DPR's self-aggrandizing, pseudo-revolutionary rhetoric about freedom is a fucking idiot!....not knocking the people that used it to order drugs, only the people that actually think that them buying them drugs through it actually added a damn thing to the fucking world, because it didn't!

Nobody likes drugs more than me, but there's a hell of a lot more to life and the world's problems than fucking drugs!

@Teological, you need to calm the fuck down...If you don't like America, you should just boycott everything American, including music, films and underground illicit websites created by AMERICANS!...I take it you've never been here, so I'll forgive your gross over-generalizations, but if you were bashing any other country, race or culture I'm sure it would go against the BLUA...

Also, where do you think the "vendors" that sell online get their drugs? Where do you think the drugs are produced and where they come from? As if selling drugs that are still largely produced and distributed by violent international criminal organizations that care nothing for human life is somehow turned into something positive because someone anonymously has someone they met online send those drugs through the mail...ha, please!

Unless we're talking about psychedelics, marijuana, mushrooms....a lot of which aren't controlled by organized crime because they're not addictive enough to be profitable, which if the fucking idiot(s) that ran this website had limited it too in the first place probably wouldn't be facing this right now....

Move to Pakistan or Iran and see how open-minded and tolerant they are of your drug use...It's just fucking funny what you wrote, how many Bitcoins did you lose? package didn't show up?! Ha, so now you're gonna blame the US?

There's so many drugs in the US, it's impossible for anyone to even fathom, and for the most part the drug laws are actually a lot more lenient than most places, but it varies by state....I'm sure the average sentence for possession here if you take all cases into consideration is on the low side compared to a lot of places....As long as you're not arrested by the Feds, it usually takes a few times to even go to jail at all in most places on the East and West coast, other places you're completely screwed, but the worst states for drugs are mostly places you wouldn't really wanna go to anyway...

The US can't even be viewed as one country. Most of the people that live here will live and die without even visiting a fraction of it...
 
opi8 said:
I don't think anybody uses 2046 bit encryption. 2048 on the other hand...
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The RSA cipher can utilise keys from 2 to 4,096. It is theorised any key above 4096-bits is unbreakable (but who knows Government processing power/supercomputer architecture/parallel,grid or distributed computing power. Ala, Deep Blue)

limonov said:
.....This will clear out a lot of 'casual' users and reduce the popularity of buying drugs online and I don't think that's a bad thing. Less idiots and a fragmentation of the scene (I could see European only/Australia only/etc 'regional' SRs becoming more common, for example, like with RCs) - that's gonna be the main effect of SR closing down. ....r.
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Really? I believe more casual users would utilise services/forums such as SR - can imagine some 16yo kid in a dark, dingy room, late at night purchasing some drug, giving away whatever information believing all his information is "safe" since there's no face-to-face-like interactions happening, you're just passing over an address and order. :\

I do agree geographical-centric would become (be better) services. Especially if the providing services are overseas (read: less FED jurisdiction), in addition to rotationing/decentralising servers.


teological said:
You know what I find funny?..... FUCK YOU
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I'll just leave this one and let teological hang him/herself with that one! :|
 
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RE: The "Bitcoins out of circulation" theory proposed ITT

Forbes reports on what's going on with the commissions earned by SR. As for the bitcoins seized, they quote an FBI spokesperson saying that they'll hold on to the bitcoins until the judicial process is over, after which they'll probably liquidate them. The money not seized is obviously still in circulation. (Some of the proponents of the "bitcoin out of circulation" theory apparently don't understand the definition of money.)
 
BlueHues said:
Mailing drugs has been going on forever, Silk-Road was nothing but a glorified anonymous chat-room that connected buyers with sellers, and anyone who buys into Ross Ulbricht's/DPR's self-aggrandizing, pseudo-revolutionary rhetoric about freedom is a fucking idiot!....not knocking the people that used it to order drugs, only the people that actually think that them buying them drugs through it actually added a damn thing to the fucking world, because it didn't!

Nobody likes drugs more than me, but there's a hell of a lot more to life and the world's problems than fucking drugs!

@Teological, you need to calm the fuck down...If you don't like America, you should just boycott everything American, including music, films and underground illicit websites created by AMERICANS!...I take it you've never been here, so I'll forgive your gross over-generalizations, but if you were bashing any other country, race or culture I'm sure it would go against the BLUA...

Also, where do you think the "vendors" that sell online get their drugs? Where do you think the drugs are produced and where they come from? As if selling drugs that are still largely produced and distributed by violent international criminal organizations that care nothing for human life is somehow turned into something positive because someone anonymously has someone they met online send those drugs through the mail...ha, please!

Unless we're talking about psychedelics, marijuana, mushrooms....a lot of which aren't controlled by organized crime because they're not addictive enough to be profitable, which if the fucking idiot(s) that ran this website had limited it too in the first place probably wouldn't be facing this right now....

Move to Pakistan or Iran and see how open-minded and tolerant they are of your drug use...It's just fucking funny what you wrote, how many Bitcoins did you lose? package didn't show up?! Ha, so now you're gonna blame the US?

There's so many drugs in the US, it's impossible for anyone to even fathom, and for the most part the drug laws are actually a lot more lenient than most places, but it varies by state....I'm sure the average sentence for possession here if you take all cases into consideration is on the low side compared to a lot of places....As long as you're not arrested by the Feds, it usually takes a few times to even go to jail at all in most places on the East and West coast, other places you're completely screwed, but the worst states for drugs are mostly places you wouldn't really wanna go to anyway...

The US can't even be viewed as one country. Most of the people that live here will live and die without even visiting a fraction of it...
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Marijuana is most definitely still mostly distributed by gangs...
 
sandytrail said:
Forbes reports on what's going on with the commissions earned by SR. As for the bitcoins seized, they quote an FBI spokesperson saying that they'll hold on to the bitcoins until the judicial process is over, after which they'll probably liquidate them. The money not seized is obviously still in circulation. (Some of the proponents of the "bitcoin out of circulation" theory apparently don't understand the definition of money.)
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Interesting! I wasn't entirely sure what would have happen with the money. In the end Bitcoins are a virtual (crypto)virtual-currency (much of "real" currency is), decentralised (independent of any central authority) and could quite collapse (along with other technical vulnerabilities/issues I'm sure I haven't think about. Like I said, I'm not economist)
 
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