The Drug's in the Mail - The Silk Road and our very own Tronica!

[chasingabee]

i bet another site will just pop up to replace it if that hasnt already happened

 

[futura2012]

Heres the DPR Interview:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygre...-lord-the-silk-roads-dread-pirate-roberts-qa/

I have to say reading this.. This is a definite case of loss of reality. Living online and making too much money for too long. Seems like he had the fortune but lacked the fame. Reading some of this stuff just makes me cringe.

As someone on the SR forum said as soon as this interview was published his days were seriousley numbered.

Reading through some of the comments posted I agree it sounds like the original team / individual made the smart move and handed over the reigns before the heat kicked in.

This current guy sounds totally naive to exactly what he was doing. Crazy story..

I am not sure if I agree something new will spring up in quite the same context. Yes I am sure another site is out there but the same scale and same userbase / seller base unlikely.

Atlantis has just pulled the plug and pretty much scammed the entire site. I am not so sure trust and confidence will be so prevelant in these sites anymore?

Lets face it we all assumed the SR was a menace to stick two fingers up to the authorities but in reality we were dealing with a glorified 20 something student who had some talent with code but was by no means bullet proof.

Is any major pill dealer or coke dealer going to really put the effort and confidence into this type of site anymore. I suspect for the next few years you will see bits and pieces but not another SR part II.

Then again who knows. I defy the next man to pull it off he will have balls of steel thats for sure.. Lets hope its not someone in the USA this time. Why the fuck the new DPR resided there I have no idea total naivety, loss of reality and bliss ignorance.

 

[futura2012]

Just reading this in the previous link kindly posted..

Jesus.... What a clown..

So they looked, assigning one agent to conduct "an extensive search of the Internet," in the FBI's words, looking for early Silk Road publicity. The earliest post ever to mention the site appeared on a drug-oriented forum called shroomery.org, where a user named "altoid" had made a single post. It read:

I came across this website called Silk Road. It's a Tor hidden service that claims to allow you to buy and sell anything online anonymously. I'm thinking of buying off it, but wanted to see if anyone here had heard of it and could recommend it.

The post directed readers to visit silkroad420.wordpress.com, belonging to the blogging operator WordPress, where further instructions would be found for accessing the real Silk Road site. A subpoena to WordPress Revealed that the blog had been set up on January 23, only four days before the Altoid post. If this wasn't the first mention of Silk Road, it was certainly one of them.

Altoid became a person of interest, but who was he? Further research revealed that Altoid had been posting on a board called Bitcoin Talk—further suggesting a possible link to the Silk Road, which operated on Bitcoin. A key break came when the agent found an October 11, 2011 post by Altoid, looking for an "IT pro in the Bitcoin community" and directing all inquiries to "rossulbricht at gmail dot com."

A subpoena to Google revealed that this account was in fact registered to one "Ross Ulbricht." The account was also linked to a Google+ profile, which had a picture of Ulbricht and a link to his favorite videos on YouTube. The videos provided a key clue; several of them were from the libertarian Mises Institute, whose views jibed with the leanings of the Dread Pirate Roberts. In addition, Roberts had repeatedly linked up Mises videos when posting in the Silk Road forum and had referenced "Austrian school" economists like Ludwig von Mises, for whom the Institute was named. The clue was suggestive but not conclusive.

Still, the pieces were coming together.

 

[poledriver]

Reading through some of the comments posted I agree it sounds like the original team / individual made the smart move and handed over the reigns before the heat kicked in.

Yeah you'd think so hey, but the next bit you quoted that says this -

where a user named "altoid" had made a single post. It read:

I came across this website called Silk Road. It's a Tor hidden service that claims to allow you to buy and sell anything online anonymously. I'm thinking of buying off it, but wanted to see if anyone here had heard of it and could recommend it.

The post directed readers to visit silkroad420.wordpress.com, belonging to the blogging operator WordPress, where further instructions would be found for accessing the real Silk Road site. A subpoena to WordPress Revealed that the blog had been set up on January 23, only four days before the Altoid post. If this wasn't the first mention of Silk Road, it was certainly one of them.

Altoid became a person of interest, but who was he? Further research revealed that Altoid had been posting on a board called Bitcoin Talk—further suggesting a possible link to the Silk Road, which operated on Bitcoin. A key break came when the agent found an October 11, 2011 post by Altoid, looking for an "IT pro in the Bitcoin community" and directing all inquiries to "rossulbricht at gmail dot com."

^ That seems to suggest this guy Ross was part of it from the beginning, possibly the founder right from the get go. It'll be interesting to hear more about it all over time, Ross is certainly up shit creek though with no paddle or boat.

 

[AyahuascaSeeker13]

I'd say this cunt will have half the criminal world after him in and out of jail.

 

[casual1]

Father welcomes Silk Road arrest, closure:

The retrieval of details of tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of Australians from a shutdown black market website linked to the death of a Perth teenager has been described as a "huge win" by the boy's father.

Rod Bridge, whose son Preston died early this year after taking a substance given to him and believed to have been purchased from the Silk Road website, welcomed the site's closure.

"It's the only way that teenagers or anyone can purchase these drugs and to stop the site is a huge win. I never thought it was going to happen," Mr Bridge told Perth Radio 6PR.
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"It's always been my campaign to have this site shut down and I think now with the technology they've got, and the avenues they've made, there would be a lot of people who'd be worried out there."

Preston Bridge, 16, died after he fell from a Scarborough hotel balcony after taking the synthetic chemical 251-NBOMe, or LSD, which was believed to be bought by another person from the website.

The illegal drug selling website was shut down after FBI agents arrested and charged a man in San Francisco on Tuesday with computer hacking, money laundering, drug trafficking and arranging a murder for hire.

Website accounts – reported to be up to 957,000 and many registered in Australia - accessed Silk Road through Tor, a tool which provided online anonymity to buy drugs using the viral currency Bitcoin.

However, the FBI is now taking away the encrypted layers of Tor which once protected the customers' identities.

"Hopefully a lot of people who think they could set up a business online from now on they'll think twice about it," Mr Bridge said.

"I hope they continue on with this and dive deeper into it to stop any future avenues and people wanting to sell drugs online."

Mr Bridge told Fairfax Media on Thursday morning he had been "overwhelmed" by the charges and closure of the site by United States authorities.

"It's amazing. It's great, good news," an emotional Mr Bridge said.

"It's not going to bring Preston back but at least the site's closed down and that was the point of the whole thing [campaign]."

Mr Bridge said he understood how difficult it was to close a website and more so to find the operators.

"It's a situation you can't close the site then you have to find the person but now that's closed down.

"It's stopped the ability for people to buy online," he said.

Mr Bridge said the focus may now turn to customers of the website.

"There're a lot of scared people out there now."

Read more: http://www.watoday.com.au/technology/technology-news/father-welcomes-silk-road-arrest-closure-20131003-2uuzm.html

 

[Captain Brewster]

^ fear is your only god.

 

[poledriver]

"It's the only way that teenagers or anyone can purchase these drugs and to stop the site is a huge win. I never thought it was going to happen," Mr Bridge told Perth Radio 6PR.

That's bullshit. Anyone with an internet connection who wants to take the risk can order them from places like China, or there are also other online black markets in operation right now, although much smaller than SR I believe, but there are probably other people out there who are right now trying to set up new technologies to replace the newly taken down SR, it may not be in the next few months that we here about another site that gains mass popularity for drug selling and buying, but in the next yr or two I'd bet there is one or two or more that vill the void. They will learn from the SR takedown and probably (hopefully) do an even better job.

And it's not the only way teenagers or anyone can buy these drugs, how about the dude down the road that sells whatever is going?

 

[Christ!]

i bet another site will just pop up to replace it if that hasnt already happened

Will be hard to get the trust up. Everyone will be worrying it's a honeypot.

Even though I never used silk road I hope something pops up to replace it. With the money to be made you think replacements will come, and the ways where silk road got it wrong they could improve.

 

[drug_mentor]

Was shocked to read this on the train home the other day, fucking huge news indeed! Never used SR, never so much as opened the page just to check it out, still am very disappointed at this conclusion as it was both a very interesting and amusing concept.

Sucks to be this guy though, no doubt he will have the book thrown at him like nothing else, I suppose he knew what he was getting into and the couple of assassination attempts show that he was a pretty shitty person morally any way, still I hate to see yet another person thrown in a cage to rot for the rest of their life because of the war on drugs.

I don't have any problem believing this guy is the legit DPR, sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. I do wonder if he had it handed down to him or was the actual founder of the site, some of the claims in that article would seem to suggest the latter but I guess we don't know the full story as yet.

 

[opi8]

I have researched this thoroughly, in the hopes of getting a new paid article out of it.

The thing that I see is this Ulbricht character was a beginner at PHP when he started. He is not a computer programming god. He was, however, extremely talented in other areas from all reports and PHP is easy to learn. It's also known for many, many exploits - especially 0-day exploits. The questions that I saw him asking were newb level. I imagine he asked more, but realising his first mistake, made them under completely new identies. Unable to use Curl? Well, I won't bore you with details but it's such a simple thing to do, putting quotations around strings and not for variables etc. whatever.

I hope nobody praises this guy as a hacker genius, because while he may have been a genius in some matters, such as his experimental crystal research stuff which I have no idea about, I think a lot of his, and the road's problems were because he was learning a (very simple to learn) programming language from the start.

Edit: as an afterthought, maybe the first hit he ordered was on his coding accomplice. Someone who knew how to add features to the site. We all know that he made contact with 2 feds, don't we? I think that was his main fuckups. Asking federal agents to kill people isn't usually a good idea.

 

[zzz101]

Interesting opi. I'm sure it wasn't just those few mistakes that cost him his empire. I'm sure he made many other errors as i guess the fbi, etc were just stacking up more evidence before arresting him.

He could of just been scamming the blackmailers back, to pay them off & keep quiet. He would of had to pay that vendor 500k to keep quiet, instead he got off it by only paying 150k. Weather there was really a murder or not - he may of just got scammed.

Either way, even if it was true, one or two deaths for ~billion dollars worth of drug-trading isn't bad, no?

Thousands die every year in Mexico ~trading drugs, and everyone looks the other way!

 

[Docta]

Even though I never used silk road I hope something pops up to replace it. With the money to be made you think replacements will come, and the ways where silk road got it wrong they could improve.

The thing about this kind of thing is the genie can not be put back in the bottle. Its a Hydra for each head cut off two more grow in is place.

BMR and Sheep have just taken up the slack, re-coding functionality to allow for Australian domestic vendors.

Taking Silk Road off line has done nothing.

 

[opi8]

The other thing to remember is, this 1 bust doesn't change the lessons learnt from LE.

I know they managed to bust a big time dealer a while back by making a lot of orders and tringulating the source.

Thing is, every time a bust happens, more intelligence is learnt. I hate the war on drugs with a passion, but with enough resources (such as a country, or the majority of the world), the TOR and mail system will not hold up to its scrutiny.

I don't mean to be paranoid and pessimistic, that's just the way I am.

 

[Crankinit]

However, the FBI is now taking away the encrypted layers of Tor which once protected the customers' identities.

What.

The other thing to remember is, this 1 bust doesn't change the lessons learnt from LE.

I know they managed to bust a big time dealer a while back by making a lot of orders and tringulating the source.

Thing is, every time a bust happens, more intelligence is learnt. I hate the war on drugs with a passion, but with enough resources (such as a country, or the majority of the world), the TOR and mail system will not hold up to its scrutiny.

I don't mean to be paranoid and pessimistic, that's just the way I am.

LE learn, but so do distributors.

The drug market is the Hydra of classical mythology, chop off one head and another two heads grow to replace it.

Already those smaller markets which were previously minor competition to SR are taking a larger market share and major vendors are setting up email contact with customers (those who don't already have it). In all probability we'll see smaller, invite-only websites pop up seeking to conduct quiet business and avoid the mainstream publicity which killed SR. And make no mistake, it wasn't the FBI, or the DEA, who killed SR, SR was running on a limited lifespan from the moment that Gawker article brought it to the attention of the general public, the only surprise is that it lasted as long as it did under the cross hairs of those seeking to destroy any who would defy their prohibitionist agenda.

But now that online drug markets are old hat, sellers have learned some discretion and customers have developed a taste for cheap, convenient online purchases, there's no going back.

 

[futura2012]

The thing that I see is this Ulbricht character was a beginner at PHP when he started. He is not a computer programming god. He was, however, extremely talented in other areas from all reports and PHP is easy to learn. It's also known for many, many exploits - especially 0-day exploits. The questions that I saw him asking were newb level. I imagine he asked more, but realising his first mistake, made them under completely new identies. Unable to use Curl? Well, I won't bore you with details but it's such a simple thing to do, putting quotations around strings and not for variables etc. whatever.

I hope nobody praises this guy as a hacker genius, because while he may have been a genius in some matters, such as his experimental crystal research stuff which I have no idea about, I think a lot of his, and the road's problems were because he was learning a (very simple to learn) programming language from the start.

I am not so sure we can assume DPR was a total newb in terms of coding. From all accounts it seems his knowledge was above and beyond newbie status. By all accounts I would say he would be classed as an advanced coder not a newbie. Of course it is speculative in terms of who actually coded the site but in terms of theory, concept an execution I would say DPR and SR was one step ahead of the competition.

The posts in which he allegedly revealed his identity were quite specific. If you take something such as the engine of Silk Road there would be many elements of coding required if you were operating a site of that nature as an individual or small group inevitabley at some point you would encounter certain issues where by you would have to turn to the outside world for asistance. Clearly the feds are aware of this and as a result focussed attention on certain coding forums that discuss elements of code relevent to TOR, bitcoin etc. We dont actually know how much outside assistance was required during the ongong maintainance of SR unfurtunately it only takes one fuck up of your real identity and then all is revealed.

It was also interesting to see how they focussed their attention at rewinding the clock and looking at early posts published on drug forums shroomery etc announcing "oh i found this drug website what do you think? type questions.

I think the accusations that DPR is responsible for computer hacking because hacking tools were available on the site is ridiculous. You can buy the majority of this stuff on ebay if you look.

The accusations about organising hired hits I would say seem almost story like.

I wonder sometimes if all these so called "mistakes" by DPR arent infact a smoke screen for a more harsh reality that TOR isnt infact as secure as we think? Lets face it the majority of us just type TOR into google click on the first link. Download the browser, buy some bitcoins maybe not via TOR. Start up TOR, select some drugs, pay hand over our address details, wait for the drugs to arrive and assume everything is ay okay.

I suspect the reality of what you are doing is riddled with security flaws. I suspect most of us get away with it because of volume of users and low volume of purchase. If you were shifting kgs of cocaine each day then I suspect these security flaws would become more apparent.

I think in many ways Silk Road gave many of us a total False Sense of Reality. I think what this bust has shown is if you are buying drugs online you really cannot trust anything. You dont really know who the TOR package came from, or what flaws may lie in the tor browser you are using, You dont really know where the bitcoins came from, you dont know who is hosting the SR esk site, You dont know who the vendor is, and likely you dont really understand the underlying code you are relaint on for your drug purchasing address details to be blasted across the internet.

I would also assume based on the number of sellers on SR not all of them would be much better in terms of security practice. Once again you can only assume they are tech savvy and have their shit together. The reality may be a meth head sat in a garden shed with a pile of dope, a notepad and a laptop.

After reading into this further I suspect a lot of the Silk Road bust was based on some serious verging on illegal coding by the feds. Using techniques that only major hacking crews would use.

I did read talk of the SR servers being "mirrored" by the feds and I suspect this was just the tip of the ice berg in terms of the techniques applied.

Here is an article about the USA NSA spying organisation and how flaws in certain versions of the TOR firefox have vulnerabilities the feds have figured out and have taken advantage of.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/04/nsa_using_firefox_flaw_to_snoop_on_tor_users/

My theories in terms of the future:

It seems Atlantis bolted and ran just in time before the heat set in. I did look at that site and looking at how it was structured the coding seemed tighter than SR. Maybe they new something DPR didnt.

I am not so sure a new SR replacement will appear I suspect vendors may take on smaller sites and far more simpler. Effectively a single page site on TOR, a bit coin wallet address and a PGP key. That to me would seem harder for the feds to crack. Clearly it would never give the benefits of ESCROW, FEEDBACK and all the other benefits we had with SR but I think as the server code gets more complex and requires more user input then the vulnerabilities get bigger.

Lets face it a single page site publishing what stuff you have for sale, where to send money and a PGP key for contact then that would be a much harder egg to crack.

It will be very interesting to see how this case evolves and also what happens in terms of the online drug scene.

I will check out BMR and sheep and have a look whats happening.

 

[laugh]

^ fear is your only god.

it makes the world go around.

 

[Christ!]

Heres the DPR Interview:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygre...-lord-the-silk-roads-dread-pirate-roberts-qa/

I have to say reading this.. This is a definite case of loss of reality. Living online and making too much money for too long. Seems like he had the fortune but lacked the fame. Reading some of this stuff just makes me cringe.

Very interesting interview cheers for posting.

It's pretty difficult to not leave a digital fingerprint these days. He seems like a intelligent guy, although somewhat naive (which comes with youth fair enough) He could have been airtight 99.995% of the time but it only takes that .005% or one single time for it all to be for naught. It takes a special kind of person to be able to have the discipline, knowledge and experience to be able to run something like silk road (or even help run it) - I think we have to give him some credit, to have successfully managed silk road for so long...I'm sure the amount of money and manpower being poured into busting it was immense. Lots of people seemed to have the impression of DPR being almost godly, so it's easy to understand some of the doubts over his identity.

Just as a simple example though, doing that interview with forbes - writing/grammar analysis is getting pretty sophisticated, and with the trove of data the NSA has I wouldn't be surprised if that kind of thing helped bust people in the near future (just the way you string your sentences together). His profile wouldn't have been difficult to narrow down either - youngish/university education with maths, physics, tech/libertarian/male/spends lots of time online/likely has a social media presence....it was only a matter of time really.

If I were rich I'd search for a group of driven, extremely disciplined kids from a poor background (probably not from a western country) - sponsor their schooling, university education...monitor them and pick two or three that could create and maintain a silkroad 2. Move them to countries where the US don't have much reach, have them separate and not knowing eachothers identities so the system would have redundancy if one got caught. Obviously wouldn't make them do it against their will, would screen them psychologically to make sure they were fit to handle it.

If I were rich....lol

 

[Christ!]

I'm looking forward to leaning more about this case. Should be pretty bloody interesting. We will see if some of the charges hold up in court (like the hacking)

When it's all done I hope we get a chance to hear from DPR. Seems like the kind of guy who would write a book about it eventually.

 

[Captain Brewster]

^ I'd be up for a read of that book.

I liked the thread that I saw on Reddit (I think it was showing the Silk Road forum), the one about who will play Ross in the movie. Pleas DON'T be Ashton Kutcher.