After Silk Road 2.0 Bust, Eyes Turn To 'Untouchable' Decentralized Market 108
apexcp sends this article from The Daily Dot:
Following a wave of Dark Net arrests that brought down the famous anonymous drug market Silk Road 2.0, all eyes have turned to a marketplace called OpenBazaar that is designed to be impossible to shut down. Described as the "next generation of uncensored trade" and a "safe untouchable marketplace," OpenBazaar is fundamentally different from all the online black markets that have come before it, because it is completely decentralized. If authorities acted against OpenBazaar users, they could arrest individuals, but the network would survive. "If you're thinking about OpenBazaar as Silk Road 3.0, you're thinking about it much too narrowly," said OpenBazaar operations lead Sam Patterson in an interview last night. "I actually think it's much more powerful as eCommerce 2.0."
Yeah, that looks anonymous. (Score:1)
Re:Yeah, that looks anonymous. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Yeah, that looks anonymous. (Score:4, Funny)
No no no, don't you see? This is entirely unlike Craig's List! For one thing, it doesn't have Craig. For another... um, ... LOOK BEHIND YOU, A THREE HEADED MONKEY!
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No it is not like craigslist because:
There is no central server system making user tracking trivial and no central entity who might behave not-evil today, but once they sellout, all bets are off on how users get treated and how that collected data gets used.
Buy focusing on the lack of transaction fees for selling stuff, you are looking solely at the surface and totally missing the underlying structure.
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There is still a transaction. A pattern of its traffic will emerge and be easily detectable. The best way to conduct business is to just blend in with the noise the best you can.
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Yes, but it is so much easier to just collect that info if it is all done on your own server through an interface you have total control over. It becomes possible, probably not easy, to blend in with the noise of the internet in general through a distributed system.
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Do you have any evidence, any at all that a TOR user's anonymity has ever been compromised due to a vulnerability specific to TOR?
To my knowledge ever document case of someone being discovered that used TOR was because of something they said or did, some type of malware on there machine, or a user-agent that was leaky about identifying information.
I am not saying TOR has not been compromised, we know of the malware injection done by some exit node operations for example, but assuming you are being smart, us
Re:Yeah, that looks anonymous. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why the Gentle User cannot have nice things.
Tor must be implemented with precision. The steps are involved because the theory is involved. Some of the better, well-informed and technically savvy users have been busted [techdirt.com].
I am an IT professional and I am not at all comfortable that I could use Tor and guarantee my own anonymity.
I advise people against using Tor in hopes that they will be able to surf without discovery because it can give a false sense of freedom to do as one wishes.
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There are simply too many moving parts to the usable Internet (the WWW). Everything from the browser to the DNS request can be compromised. And the browser itself is complex, speaking at a minimum of three languages (HTML, CSSx, Javascript) which, even if one or two are disabled, may still leak information.
And then, let's talk operating system. Unless your OS air gapped, it probably has holes in it that are exploitable. In fact, anything that interfaces with the network will potentially have exploitable hol
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TOR users are busted regularly, because the default settings in the TBB are not secure. Makes you wonder why. Has anyone who has hardened the TBB been busted? Thanks to parallel construction we'll never know.
We do know that .onion servers are thoroughly insecure, with many cycles of bust, "oops", patch. Makes you wonder why. Is Wikileaks back up on TOR yet?
We know the NSA can de-anonymise TOR, but it's difficult for them and they can only target specific users, and not from stored data (or so the leaks
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Tor is NOT secure. Their own developers have admitted as such, and from oh, May this year articles have popped up pretty much fucking everywhere about MITM attacks from the NSA and hidden service exploits coming from the FBI; if you think that's secure, well, good luck to you,.
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TOR does nothing. Anyone can run an exit node. Anyone can track your shit back to the IP you entered TOR with. The government operates many TOR exit nodes.
"We sell legal things too!!1111!!" is about as salient a point as "But what if I use Bittorrent to download Linux ISOs?!?!111" or "But The Pirate Bay doesn't host content!!!". It doesn't stop the people doing illegal things from being busted. It doesn't stop the ISPs, governments, etc. from attacking the service as a whole. It doesn't stop people fr
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Unless that terrorist decided to just hop the fence one day.
As for free wi-fi, you'd need to find a new hot spot each time you connected. Away from your house.
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You're connecting directly to people's IP addresses! For fuck's sake, guys! Are you even trying to make it anonymous anymore?
Sweet pickles. From the fucking article:
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Presumably the connections to IPs happen through TOR.
Look on the bright side ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Look on the bright side ... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Government has a vested interest in controlling people, and the easiest way to control people is to control trade. More conrtol of trade, the more control of the people you have. Liberty is being eroded with every "there ought to be a law" cry.
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I think they would have said that about bittorrent, tor, and bitcoins years ago. Most of the world's more repressive governments have already banned one or all of those.
As for this one itself, I would think communist governments would ban this as well as trade itself is the biggest ideological enemy of communism.
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I think they would have said that about bittorrent, tor, and bitcoins years ago. Most of the world's more repressive governments have already banned one or all of those.
As for this one itself, I would think communist governments would ban this as well as trade itself is the biggest ideological enemy of communism.
Score one for communism then.
There are few things in life more tedious than the obsession with making money.
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Funny you mention honey and that many items can be legally sold.
I know in my state it's illegal to sell food items without having proper licenses.
Meaning if you package it yourself you better have your health inspection certs.
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not all users will be breaking the law, the first item sold on it was Honey, I plan to buy and sell completely legal items on there, I'm not a fan of ebay and their fees, or their rules, like "no food" etc, a lot of perfectly legal items that I can sell on the street legally can't be sold on Ebay
As a peer-to-peer system it could get ugly when they (law enforcement) develop a way to find out which peers are holding certain bits of information, such as offers to buy/sell contraband items. You could be convicted as an accessory because you merely passed along other users' data.
that is why we have dmca safe harbor laws the one good part of the dmca. its why gmail isn't shutdown for facilitating drug sales as well
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that is why we have dmca safe harbor laws the one good part of the dmca. its why gmail isn't shutdown for facilitating drug sales as well
I could be wrong but I think the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act only applies to copyright infringement. It's not a blanket protection against all criminal acts.
Honey, Everything is Illegal (Score:2)
Federal prosecutors in February accused two of the biggest US honey processors - Honey Solutions of Texas and Groeb Farms Inc of Michigan - of buying illegal Chinese imports of the product in order to avoid being assessed tens of millions of dollars under the anti-dumping duties. The companies were fined a total of $3 million but, under deferred-prosecution agreements, won't face further penalties if they don't repeat the conduct alleged.
Also charged were five individuals, including four US honey brokers, w
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Hi you fucking "I just registered an account to spam on this very topic" shill.
Protip: Those of us that have been here a LONG while get to see your entire history and details for free.
You registered an account specifically to talk about this exact subject.
Go the fuck home, shill.
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Because ILLEGAL!!!!
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The amount of trading on these black markets is huge. Meanwhile, demand for a pure p2p trading marketplace is probably rather low. It would be very easy for OpenBazaar to be overwhelmed
I don't hold my breath. (Score:2)
I'll wait for silk road 4.0
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4.1 here. "dot oh" releases scare me.
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I'm sure they'll get shit halfway right with 3.11, for workgroups.
This is missing one of Silk Road's major features (Score:5, Interesting)
This is missing one of Silk Road's major features of "washing" your BitCoins through a central pool. Without the laundering facilities available, it becomes a lot easier to track sellers down.
I suppose a decentralized eBay-ish thing could be handy, but without the money laundering, it's a lot less useful.
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I don't see why that can't be a completely separate service. It should be perfectly legal to trade one coin for another, and it is legal to value your privacy. Suspicious, perhaps, given that everyone's been giving up all their personal info left and right, but legal. Am I wrong?
Re:This is missing one of Silk Road's major featur (Score:5, Insightful)
People give up their liberties when government cries "ILLEGAL". The problem is, there is no crime between two willing people.
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The problem is, there is no crime between two willing people.
That's a bit of an oversimplification. There's a whole class of crimes that involve willing, if misinformed or deceived, people: fraud.
And while the definition of "willing" is debatable, the impact of consent is also subject to reasonable (IMHO) constraints, as with minors or people of otherwise diminished capacity (drugged, intoxicated, or mentally retarded). Once you start accounting for the nuances of reality, your maxim doesn't have quite the same truthy ring to it anymore.
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Old Testament allows men to have female children as brides, so does Islam, so do the Vedic religions.
The old testament also allows for stoning people for being "a stubborn and rebellious son". That does not, to my mind, make it a good idea.
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"Old Testament allows men to have female children as brides"
I need chapter and verse for this "allowance" I've not ever seen it.
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Interesting that they be unbetrothed (Implying marriageable). Additionally, the implication is that it was mutual consent (they be found). Lastly, it is implied that they would be "married" at that point.
The context of the entire passage is about rape, but rather about sexual purity. So, no, this doesn't mean mean can rape girls. Nice Try though.
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Nope. Not general counsel to rape girls. Or even have child brides. Age is not actually mentioned in any of the so called passages, and clearly the passage above Deut 22:28-29 implies females of marriageable age (in the midst of sexual purity laws).
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A businessman and governor can certainly come to some sort of mutually willing and beneficial agreement regarding the management of, say, coal fly ash on the property of said business, perhaps in the area of how well all those expensive regulations and inspections are carried out, and Governor Pat McCrory did work for Duke Energy all those years. Oh, your downstream water is now a little polluted? Whoops, tee-hee! No crime, just two willing folks who came to an understanding, uh-huh.
scary part... (Score:4, Insightful)
This looks great in concept but, having everyone run it on their own machines and host their own store means encouraging lots of people to be vulnerable to every security issue that comes along. Oops one remote exploit and anyone's anonymity can be compromised.
Now, I am not fool, I realize that many of the bigger players will take more steps will protect themselves with dedicated servers rented under false identities etc....but the vast majority are being encouraged to leave themselves exposed to every vulnerablity that comes along because they don't have the sophistication to play the game that they are being encouraged to play.
This is one of the reasons I really liked the concept of freenet....sure everyone is hosting but, there is author anonimty beyond simply "you can't find my IP", there is actual separation between hosted data and how it is published.
Of course, I haven't tried it in years but, the problem always more seemed to be speed than anything since it is funadamentally a storage and retrieval mechanism and not a transport layer.
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You seriously don't understand the problem then. Yes you are right about all those things however, there is a major difference here. None of those is offering up a service to the world that allows people to connect to me and make requests.
It is an entirely different type of attack surface, with far lower requirements to exploit and allows for fast exploitation of many targets as soon as an exploit becomes available, and requires no compromise of intermediate systems to pull off, and no need to wait for an u
The future of capitalism (Score:5, Interesting)
AirBnB threatens the hotel/motel paradigm, Lift and Uber threaten taxis, now OpenBazaar threatens online commerce, bitcoin, etc;
These new services appear to be starting a crack, albeit a small one, in the current model of how money is made and by who.
Re:The future of capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The future of capitalism (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, there is a change in the sense that these businesses make rent seeking harder. That is, it forces companies to compete in the market (true capitalism) vs running to government to ask for handouts or favorable treatment (crony "capitalism").
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We have a winner!!! The founders of Ebay, and millions of other companies got rich and became the "capitalists" from nothing. This idea that there are a bunch of men in suits somewhere that determine "capitalism" is the reason why ignorant people hate capitalism. They don't understand that the very idea of capitalism is that anyone that does something better/cheaper/whatever than everyone else wins. This doesn't fly in the face of capitalism, it IS capitalism. If you can't find the end game for anyone run
Re: The future of capitalism (Score:1)
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Thank you. Recognize it as an unparalleled engine of invention and wealth creation for the average person, that perhaps needs some government action for rough edges, like pollution or a safety net for sudden Jon loss.
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Politics is about inserting yourself in the way of capitalism, AKA economic freedom, to get paid somehow to get back out of the way.
The first principle is freedom, and it is still way too easy for fraudulent reasons such as "there is only room for one cable company in this city", or 5000 cabs, or one ferry boat company, or private parking near an airport needs a 30% tax because they take business away from the inefficient, on-site government parking lot.
ENOUGH. Time for freedom
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I don't thing there's going to be any kind of fundamental change in capitalism. The only thing that's going to change is the method and who gets to benefit from it.
I disagree.
Wikileaks was effectively stopped when all credit card companies refused service. Defense distributed lost their payment processor ("Stripe").
The TOS for many online resellers restrict what you can and cannot sell - eBay won't let you sell booze or their empty, collectible containers [ebay.com], animals, or event tickets. (Why can't I resell my event ticket if I decide I'm not going to use it?) Amazon, even Craigslist have similar restrictions. You can't sell fart apps on the apple store.
This will also put
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I'm pretty sure you're under-estimating the effect that secure untraceable commerce would have on the world.
That is a great point, and it appears to be an under-appreciated view of how things are developing.
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However, I'm not looking at OpenBazaar or the others I referred to as "here is where I'm going to buy my child porn and meth" sort of sites. I'm looking at them as just another instance(and they keep piling up) of how decentralized economics is and will change the bigger picture of the future of capitalism and economics. As the guy at OpenBazaar seems to allude to, "Why let
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So then we just move to steganography.
Re: The future of capitalism (Score:1)
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Good.
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If you can't see how, then you do your username a great disservice (not like you haven't already done that with that misspelling.)
It's a frickin' pipe dream (pun intentional) (Score:3)
Seriously, if you're running across someone else's network and/or on someone else's hardware, you can't keep this anonymous.
Even if you're running on your OWN hardware, you still have to interconnect. And there just isn't a good, reliable way to remain anonymous.
If someone can get in and see your wares, the feds can as well. At which point, you take up residence in FPMITA prison and they liquidate your life for cash.
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Why yes. And didn't he spend a lot of time trying to avoid the media a while back?
focus on uncontroversial business (Score:2)
A decentralized free market like that is good for many reasons. The way to get something like that established is to focus on uncontroversial business. If it primarily becomes a tool for illegal dealings, merely having the software on your computer might be construed by courts as evidence of illegal activity.
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A decentralized free market like that is good for many reasons. The way to get something like that established is to focus on uncontroversial business. If it primarily becomes a tool for illegal dealings, merely having the software on your computer might be construed by courts as evidence of illegal activity.
Yep, that same way having an unregistered gun means you are a murder.
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no, it's even more basic than that; it's the fact of having a penis makes you a rapist.
(you might not even be aware that such software is even installed on your computer...)
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You know, with idiots like you attacking people who are actually pro-liberty and think that the current state of affair sucks, it is hardly surprising that we aren't making any progress.
In different words, if you want to know why having an unregistered gun gets people in trouble, it's because people like you like to whine and complain instead of figuring out smart strategies for doing something about it.
Great idea, but some concerns... (Score:2)
It seems like OpenBazaar is off to a good start, but there is still a long way to go before users can use it with confidence. Some issues I can think of that the current implementation doesn't yet solve
Privacy/viewability of content between "open" nodes and "darknet" nodes. If OpenBazaar is to be equally for people selling homemade handicrafts and those who want to sell or trade in substances their governments find illicit, its going to be a big issue to have both of them displayed side by side. How do yo
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> but Bitcoin doesn't have any sort of "chargeback" system.
The first Silk Road solved this problem by "escrowing" bitcoin payments. Drug buyer sent funds to the Silk Road, who held them until the buyer got his goods and was satisfied. When he posted a positive review/reputation score, the funds were released to the seller. With the distributed "OpenBazaar" system, you just need neutral third parties to supply the escrow service.
Silk Road 2.0 busted ... (Score:2)
... Tor isn't a big help here.