Silk road shut down (allegedly)

wexie · 02-10-2013 07:22PM #1

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24373759

Silk Road shutdown, founder operator arrested yada yada yada yada blahblah blah

The FBI said it has also seized approximately $3.6m (£2.2m) worth of bitcoins - a virtual currency.

Whut?

I wonder exactly how one would seize Bitcoins what with them being a virtual currency? Was the whole point (or one at least) of bitcoins not that they are virtual and therefore can't be seized?

Or can they be stored on a USB key or something (surely not?)

Was the whole point (or one at least) of bitcoins not that they are virtual and therefore can't be seized?

Doc Ruby · 02-10-2013 07:26PM

wexie wrote: »

I wonder exactly how one would seize Bitcoins what with them being a virtual currency? Was the whole point (or one at least) of bitcoins not that they are virtual and therefore can't be seized?

Or can they be stored on a USB key or something (surely not?)

Was the whole point (or one at least) of bitcoins not that they are virtual and therefore can't be seized?

The point of bitcoins was to provide anonymous internet money, at which of course they also failed.

Anyway seizing them just means making them unavailable to anyone else. If you could just copy them and make off with the copies they wouldn't be much use as currency.

Seachmall · 02-10-2013 07:33PM

wexie wrote: »

Whut?

I wonder exactly how one would seize Bitcoins what with them being a virtual currency? Was the whole point (or one at least) of bitcoins not that they are virtual and therefore can't be seized?

Or can they be stored on a USB key or something (surely not?)

Was the whole point (or one at least) of bitcoins not that they are virtual and therefore can't be seized?

The point of bitcoins is to create a decentralized currency, and it has anonymity benefits as well.

You can sort of store them on USB keys, or on paper, or on a tattoo on your arm if you want.

It's not really the bitcoins being stored but the ability to access them, because the bitcoins are of course virtual.

Think of it like a vault of safety deposit boxes. If you have the key you can access the box that that key opens. You can transfer the contents of the box to other boxes. If someone steals your key and transfers the contents of the box (i.e. bitcoins) to another box you no longer have access to the contents.

That's presumably how it's been seized, the police transfered his bitcoins to a "safety deposit box" that only they have the key to.

wexie · 02-10-2013 07:36PM

Seachmall wrote: »

The point of bitcoins is to create a decentralized currency, and it has anonymity benefits as well.

You can sort of store them on USB keys, or on paper, or on a tattoo on your arm if you want.

It's not really the bitcoins being stored but the ability to access them, because the bitcoins are of course virtual.

Think of it like a vault of safety deposit boxes. If you have the key you can access the box that that key opens. You can transfer the contents of the box to other boxes. If someone steals your key and transfers the contents of the box (i.e. bitcoins) to another box you no longer have access to the contents.

That's presumably how it's been seized, the police transfered his bitcoins to a "safety deposit box" that only they have the key to.

So what you're saying they made him write down his password essentially.

Doesn't sound quite so interesting when you put it that way.

Seachmall · 02-10-2013 07:39PM

wexie wrote: »

So what you're saying they made him write down his password essentially.

Doesn't sound quite so interesting when you put it that way.

Essentially.

The "password" is a 256-bit number (called a private key) that he presumably had stored somewhere on his computer or some other device.

PizzamanIRL · 02-10-2013 07:43PM

Ah no i drive that road everyday to get to work!

BadmanRiddim · 02-10-2013 07:43PM

Shíte

Sir Humphrey Appleby · 02-10-2013 08:11PM

Silk road shut down.

Yippee, good news at last!
Ah, it is nice to see some good news on Boards every so often.

Cee-Jay-Cee · 02-10-2013 08:14PM

Seachmall wrote: »

Essentially.

The "password" is a 256-bit number (called a private key) that he presumably had stored somewhere on his computer or some other device.

I'd bet its 1234 or the default 0000

hufpc8w3adnk65 · 02-10-2013 08:17PM

Isn't that the site you could like grade a heroin etc off of? But you needed a ip blocker or something too get into it? I recall a lad telling me about it in the pub one day

bodice ripper · 02-10-2013 08:21PM

Sir Humphrey Appleby wrote: »

Silk road shut down.

Yippee, good news at last!
Ah, it is nice to see some good news on Boards every so often.

Yeah, same to you Narc.

AnonoBoy · 02-10-2013 08:23PM

Eh.... WHY am I only hearing about this site now when it's gone?

:mad::mad::mad:

Oh yeah, it's because I'm old now and don't take drugs anymore.

As you were world. Nothing important has changed. :pac:

Sir Humphrey Appleby · 02-10-2013 08:25PM

bodice ripper wrote: »

Yeah, same to you Narc.

Hear that?

Its the sound of the worlds smallest violin.:D

FouxDaFaFa · 02-10-2013 08:26PM

Another one will replace it soon enough.

Did you hear that the founder allegedly put out a hit on somebody?

DPR sent a message to "redandwhite" stating that "FriendlyChemist" is "Causing me problems" and adding: "I would like to put a bounty on his head if it's not too much trouble for you. What would be an adequate amount to motivate you to find him?" And then Later that same day, redandwhite sent DPR a message quoting him a price of $150,000 or $300,000 "depending on how you want it done" - "clean" or "non-clean"
DPR responded: "Don't want to be a pain here, but the price seems high. Not long ago, I had a clean hit done for $80k. Are the prices you quoted the best you can do? I would like this done ASAP as he is talking about releasing the info on Monday.
DPR and redandwhite agreed upon a price of 1,670 Bitcoins - approximately $150k - for the job. In DPR's message confirming the deal, DPR included a transacation record reflecting the transfer of 1,670 Bitcoins to a certain Bitcoin address.

Whether it actually came to fruition remains to be seen, things are unclear at the moment. (Character defamation or a deal was actually made).

What is clear is that the value of Bitcoin is taking a hit.

bodice ripper · 02-10-2013 08:27PM

Sir Humphrey Appleby wrote: »

Hear that?

Its the sound of the worlds smallest violin.:D

NARC! Hey, everybody look at the Narc!

Banjo String · 02-10-2013 08:27PM

All your bitcoins are belong to us.

Seachmall · 02-10-2013 08:29PM

FouxDaFaFa wrote: »

Another one will replace it soon enough.

The Black Market Reloaded is still up as far as I'm aware.

The Silk Road had a good community and reliable sellers could be easily identified.

Not sure what BMR is like, but I'm guessing it's about to get a lot more popular.

Jonny7 · 02-10-2013 08:38PM

Seachmall wrote: »

The Silk Road had a good community and reliable sellers could be easily identified.

I reckon there's a lot of disk formatting going on

FouxDaFaFa · 02-10-2013 08:38PM

Seachmall wrote: »

The Black Market Reloaded is still up as far as I'm aware.

The Silk Road had a good community and reliable sellers could be easily identified.

Not sure what BMR is like, but I'm guessing it's about to get a lot more popular.

I actually don't use any of them, never have, just have an interest in web/deepweb news.

People on r/silkroad are saying BMR is full of scammers and freaking out. You'd feel bad for some of them, there are a few who used SR to purchase medical marijuana because of their crappy American healthcare and now they feel vulnerable.

The Backwards Man · 02-10-2013 08:39PM

It was never the same after Genghis Khan died.

Seachmall · 02-10-2013 08:46PM

Jonny7 wrote: »

I reckon there's a lot of disk formatting going on

Because you had to access through Tor, and because of how Bitcoins work and how the Silk Road escrow system worked you could be fairly confident that they can't track you and even if they could they couldn't identify what you bought (if anything) and thus wouldn't be able to identify what laws you broke (if any).

Obviously I'm not privy to details of how the Silk Road operated but I'd hope they took the basic precautions to protect their users, and hope the users took the appropriate precautions to protect themselves.

Fukuyama · 02-10-2013 08:48PM

Pretty interesting website.

I accessed it once through Tor.

Really slow at loading too.

Looked around. Seen some heroin, a pretty reliable weed dealer (apparently) and some artwork for sale.

The sheer effort of transferring money by bank (the only method) to buy bitcoins, which will fluctuate wildly, to log onto a slow loading, hard to access website, to buy weed, or questionable quality and which may never materialize. All with a nice internet IP trail leading straight to your front door.

I also imagine anyone who 'invested' in Bitcoin is feeling the sting of this. Their value will plummet.

Fukuyama · 02-10-2013 08:52PM

Seachmall wrote: »

Because you had to access through Tor, and because of how Bitcoins work and how the Silk Road escrow system worked you could be fairly confident that they can't track you and even if they could they couldn't identify what you bought (if anything) and thus wouldn't be able to identify what laws you broke (if any).

Obviously I'm not privy to details of how the Silk Road operated but I'd hope they took the basic precautions to protect their users, and hope the users took the appropriate precautions to protect themselves.

Chances are this guy had other activities going on (like trying to hire people to kill other people, etc etc) and the feds were on to him.

Monitoring his web usage would just be a matter or waiting until he slipped up and forgot to protect his identity/IP/MAC address etc... or they hired a smart white hat hacker to access his computer and pull his history.

Bingo.

The feds don't have the man power to go after customers. Nor is it worth it. Imagine a huge federal investigation spanning the US (or other countries) all to find some dude that bought an ounce of weed. :rolleyes:

Dealers might be looked into. But unlikely. They've cut the head off the snake, so to speak. Job done.

Although, I guarantee. There are now several other such website spring up as we speak, ready to meet the demand.

FouxDaFaFa · 02-10-2013 09:00PM

Apparently it was as simple as him putting out an ad looking for an IT guy in 2011 in which he used a gmail account containing his actual name.

:pac:

An agent involved in the investigation ("Agent-1"), found the first few references to SR on the internet from somebody only identified as "altoid", attempting to promote the site in its beginning days, in January of 2011.

In October of the same year, a user also going by the name of "altoid" made a posting on Bitcoin Talk titled "a venture backed Bitcoin startup company", which directed interested users to "rossulbricht at gmail dot com".

That email address is what led to DPR's downfall.

Reddit

returnNull · 02-10-2013 09:03PM

Dean0088 wrote: »

All with a nice internet IP trail leading straight to your front door.

there's no 'nice internet IP trail leading to your door'.

Read up on how TOR project works.

There was a massive spike in TOR activity last month.People reckon it was the cops running there own botnet so that they could track the IP packets by controlling a mental % of the TOR exit nodes.

The Tor Project, whose software enabled the Silk Road, noticed a significant spike in usage in late August and was unable to explain it. It remains possible that the FBI or another federal agency may have suddenly flooded Tor with its own bots or other computers under its control as a way of conducting surveillance on the Silk Road.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/feds-shut-down-silk-road-arrest-alleged-admin-dread-pirate-roberts/

GreeBo · 02-10-2013 09:05PM

CJC999 wrote: »

I'd bet its 1234 or the default 0000

What about the 12 other bytes/characters?!

Nodin · 02-10-2013 09:08PM

wexie wrote: »

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24373759

Silk Road shutdown, founder operator arrested yada yada yada yada blahblah blah

yay....a victory over drugs....that'll show em.....

Fukuyama · 02-10-2013 09:11PM

returnNull wrote: »

there's no 'nice internet IP trail leading to your door'.

Read up on how TOR project works.

There was a massive spike in TOR activity last month.People reckon it was the cops running there own botnet so that they could track the IP packets by controlling a mental % of the TOR exit nodes.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/feds-shut-down-silk-road-arrest-alleged-admin-dread-pirate-roberts/

I know how Tor works.

Just because your pinged around through different nodes doesn't mean you can't be traced.

It's an anonymity network but everything leaves a history. And it can be comprimised through trial and error by hijacking individual nodes and waiting for patterns to emerge in traffic.

No an exact science, but enough to trace one user over a long period of time.

hansfrei · 02-10-2013 09:14PM

People think tor is anonymous. Lol

Inquitus · 02-10-2013 09:14PM

Nodin wrote: »

yay....a victory over drugs....that'll show em.....

Meanwhile

Illegal drugs are now cheaper and purer globally than at any time over the last 20 years, a report has warned.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24342421

bodice ripper · 02-10-2013 09:14PM

Nodin wrote: »

yay....a victory over drugs....that'll show em.....

MORE NARCS!

Silk road shut down (allegedly)

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