FBI arrests Silk Road drugs site suspect

siljaline · Dec 6, 2014

An Interview With Darkside, Russia’s Favorite Dark Web Drug Lord

Among the handful of black markets that have survived law enforcement’s recent crackdown on the Dark Web, the drug selling site RAMP is different: First, it’s written in the Russian language, and caters to only Russian clientele. Second, it’s the longest-surviving crypto market out there; It’s outlived both the Silk Road and Silk Road 2. And third, there’s the unusual figure behind it: A chatty, no-nonsense drug lord who goes by the name of Darkside.
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http://www.wired.com/2014/12/interview-darkside-russias-favorite-dark-web-drug-lord/

siljaline · Dec 13, 2014

Silk Road Judge: I Won’t Reveal Witnesses Because Ulbricht Could Have Them Killed

When alleged Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht’s trial begins in less than a month, he’ll face charges of narcotics conspiracy, money laundering, and computer fraud—not murder. But the specter of violence is creeping into Ulbricht’s trial nonetheless. The prosecution and judge in his case have now refused to let him know which witnesses will be testifying against him for fear that he might orchestrate their killing from his jail cell. [...]
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http://www.wired.com/2014/12/silk-road-judge-ulbricht-could-kill-witnesses/

siljaline · Jan 8, 2015

Dread Pirate Roberts' defence holed below the waterline

The judge presiding over the pretrial of alleged Silk Road kingpin Ross Ulbricht (aka Dred Pirate Robert) has smacked down the accused's attempts to have some charges dropped ahead of the start of next week's trial. [...]
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/08/silk_roads_ulbricht_to_stand_trial_on_all_charges/

lotuseclat79 · Jan 9, 2015

Judge: Gov’t can show murder-for-hire evidence in Silk Road trial.

Was Ross Ulbricht the Dread Pirate Roberts? Starting next week, a jury decides.
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-- Tom

siljaline · Jan 9, 2015

Why the Silk Road Trial Matters

Ross Ulbricht is finally getting his day in court, 15 months after plainclothes FBI agents grabbed him in the science fiction section of a San Francisco library and accused him of running the billion-dollar online drug bazaar known as the Silk Road. It’s a day that anyone who cares about crime, punishment and privacy in the shadows of the internet will be watching. [...]
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https://www.wired.com/2015/01/why-silk-road-trial-matters/

siljaline · Jan 13, 2015

The Silk Road trial is about more than just Ross Ulbricht

It's been more than a year since Ross Ulbricht was first arrested and named as the Dread Pirate Roberts, designer and proprietor of the Bitcoin-powered drug market known as The Silk Road. Today marks the first day of his trial, which many are already hailing as the most important trial of its kind. Prosecutors have grappled with Tor and Bitcoin before, but never on such a public stage or with so much media attention. It's a rare look at the way law enforcement approaches the dark web and the often secret tools it uses to do so. [...]
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http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/13/7538059/silk-road-trial-ross-ulbricht

siljaline · Jan 13, 2015

Silk Road Defense Says Ulbricht Was Framed by the ‘Real’ Dread Pirate Roberts

For the past year, the FBI and federal prosecutors have told and retold the story of how Ross Ulbricht created, owned and operated the massive, anonymous online drug empire known as the Silk Road. But as his trial began Tuesday, Ulbricht’s defense lawyers for the first time told their own version of that story. And while theirs also begins with Ulbricht creating the Silk Road, it ends with Ulbricht being framed by the “real” operators of the site to whom he’d handed over control. [...]
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http://www.wired.com/2015/01/isilk-road-trial-opening-statements/

siljaline · Jan 14, 2015

Silk Road stunner: Ulbricht admits founding the site, but says he isn’t DPR
(DPR being Dread Pirate Roberts)

NEW YORK—Once they got the chance, it took prosecutors less than a minute to point the finger—literally—at Ross Ulbricht.
The jury of six men and six women were assembled in Manhattan's federal courthouse to hear a story about a "dark and secret part of the Internet," government lawyer Timothy Howard explained. The story was about "a website called Silk Road, where anybody, anywhere could buy and sell dangerous drugs with the click of a mouse." [...]
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http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...k-road-but-says-he-isnt-dread-pirate-roberts/

siljaline · Jan 15, 2015

DHS Believed Mt. Gox CEO Might Have Been Silk Road’s Secret Mastermind

Long before the Department of Homeland Security set its sights on Ross Ulbricht, the agency had another surprising suspect in mind as the possible creator and administrator of the Silk Road’s massive online drug market: Mark Karpeles, the chief executive of what was then the world’s biggest bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox.
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http://www.wired.com/2015/01/dhs-believed-mt-gox-ceo-might-silk-roads-secret-mastermind/
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Dermot7 · Jan 16, 2015

After only three days into the trial of Ross Ulbricht, the alleged kingpin of the underground drug marketplace known as the Silk Road, the defendant’s situation is going from bad to worse. I previously wrote how the prosecution could follow the Bitcoin to show that Ulbricht ran Silk Road. Its no longer speculation: I’ve already identified a 3255 BTC (roughly $300,000 at the time) payment from Silk Road to Ulbricht. The prosecution can undoubtedly find many more.
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It Took Me Two Clicks To Trace Ross Ulbricht To The Silk Road - Forbes

mirimir · Jan 16, 2015

Wow! Massive OPSEC failure That's why we use mixing services.

And by the way, Bitcoin Fog's hidden-service URL has changed. The old one still works, but redirects. If you haven't already, get their GnuPG key. And contrary to chatter, they remain honest.

siljaline · Jan 20, 2015

Prosecutors Won’t Let a Jury See My Interview With Silk Road’s Dread Pirate Roberts

Update: In a ruling Tuesday morning, Judge Forrest sided with the prosecution, saying that agent Der-Yeghiayan’s “belief” that my interview with Dread Pirate Roberts might be Mark Karpeles was indeed hearsay, and not “competent evidence.” That decision will prevent the defense from bringing it up, at least in its cross examination of Der-Yeghiayan. “Whether [Der-Yeghiayan] believed the interview was with the man on the moon or Karpeles doesn’t matter,” Forrest said. [...]
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http://www.wired.com/2015/01/prosec...ee-interview-silk-roads-dread-pirate-roberts/

Dermot7 · Jan 20, 2015

I previously remarked how I could trace payments direct from the Silk Road to Ross Ulbricht in just a couple of mouseclicks. But why bother clicking when you can have a computer do the work for you?
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How I Traced 20% Of Ross Ulbricht's Biticoin To The Silk Road - Forbes

siljaline · Jan 20, 2015

Ross Ulbricht’s family “shocked” that he created Silk Road

In an e-mail to supporters on Tuesday, the family of Silk Road suspect Ross Ulbricht wrote that until last week, they did not know that their son had admitted to creating the famed illicit underground drug website. [...]
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http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/ross-ulbrichts-family-shocked-that-he-created-silk-road/

mirimir · Jan 20, 2015

I wonder why he didn't tell his parents.

He told everyone else

ronjor · Jan 21, 2015

Alleged Silk Road 2.0 'key assistant' charged

Jeremy Kirk By Jeremy Kirk
IDG News Service | Jan 20, 2015 7:15 PM PT

A 26-year-old man has been charged with three counts of conspiracy for his alleged role in running Silk Road 2.0, which launched shortly after the demise of the first iteration of the infamous underground market.
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http://www.networkworld.com/article/2872973/alleged-silk-road-20-key-assistant-charged.html

Dermot7 · Jan 21, 2015

A man has been arrested in Seattle for allegedly helping to run Silk Road 2.0, the anonymous online marketplace for illegal goods.

The site sprang up after the original Silk Road was closed down by the authorities in 2013.
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BBC News - US police arrest Silk Road 2.0 suspect in Seattle

Dermot7 · Jan 21, 2015

The accused operator of the online black marketplace Silk Road had a digital journal on his laptop detailing the development of the website and predicting it would become a “phenomenon”, jurors heard on Wednesday.
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Alleged Silk Road operator kept digital journal detailing website's development | Technology | The Guardian

Ulbricht Allegedly Planned a Silk Road Chat Tool and…Bank? | WIRED

Silk Road, for its more than two and a half years online, was an unprecedented online narcotics emporium. But according to a journal found on the laptop of its alleged creator Ross Ulbricht, Ulbricht wanted it to be even more: a “brand” that extended from communications tools to banking.
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lotuseclat79 · Jan 21, 2015

Feds found Silk Road 2 servers after a six-month attack on Tor

The Silk Road 2 trial was made possible by a six-month long attack on Tor, according to recently pubished court documents. Prosecutors are still making their case against the alleged Silk Road 2 kingpin, Blake Benthall (not to be confused with the Silk Road's Ross Ulbricht, who is also currently on trial), but Benthall's trial is already shedding new light on how law enforcement circumvented Benthall's anonymity tools. A search warrant made out for the arrest of one of the Silk Road 2's vendors describes a six-month long infiltration campaign aimed at Tor's hidden services, the same system that kept Silk Road 2 users anonymous. Eventually, that trail led investigators back to the Silk Road 2's servers, resulting in the raid that took down the site in November.
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-- Tom

mirimir · Jan 21, 2015

See link therein: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wuwtrvm6a...rcourt-brianfarrel-searchwarrantaffidavit.pdf

Edit: And see this Tor Project advisory from last summer: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-security-advisory-relay-early-traffic-confirmation-attack

Edit2: See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8925409

ronjor · Jan 22, 2015

Bitcoin Exchange Operator Sentenced to 4 Years for Silk Road Transactions
By Kim Zetter 01.21.15

A Bitcoin exchange operator who pled guilty to supplying $1 million in digital currency to people buying drugs on Silk Road was sentenced to four years in prison Tuesday.
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http://www.wired.com/2015/01/bitcoin-exchange-operator-sentenced-4-years-silk-road-transactions/

lotuseclat79 · Jan 22, 2015

Did feds mount a sustained attack on Tor to decloak crime suspects?

Court doc suggests investigators spent six months last year exploiting anonymity bug.
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-- Tom

mirimir · Jan 22, 2015

lotuseclat79 said: ↑

Did feds mount a sustained attack on Tor to decloak crime suspects?

-- Tom
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That effort, and the possible connection to the CMU presentation that was withdrawn from Black Hat last summer, are what my post #170 addresses.

Minimalist · Jan 27, 2015

Simple Google search found alleged Silk Road founder

As the first step in investigating Silk Road, IRS agent Gary Alford, who was part of an agency task force investigating organized crime, simply entered "Silk Road" into Google and looked for the oldest mention on the site.
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http://www.techworld.com/news/security/simple-google-search-outed-alleged-silk-road-founder-3595616/

mirimir · Jan 27, 2015

That is just plain sad.

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