After Silk Road 2.0 Shutdown, Rival Dark Net Markets Grow Quickly 86
apexcp writes: A week ago, Silk Road 2.0 was theatrically shut down by a global cadre of law enforcement. This week, the dark net is realigning. "In the wake of the latest police action against online bazaars, the anonymous black market known as Evolution is now the biggest Dark Net market of all time. Today, Evolution features 20,221 products for sale, a 28.8 percent increase from just one month ago and an enormous 300 percent increase over the past six months."
names.. (Score:2, Funny)
They should really start naming the black markets after big companies and celebrities. Then, when the news of a shutdown occurs, people will be confused. "What? They shut down the Microsoft drug marketplace?"
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Br "last week the feds shut down obama. obama was found to be selling millions of dollars worth of drugs and fake IDs. america sees this as a win against the terrorists"
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They shut down the Google app market where viruses and Trojans where for sale.
They shut down the Apple sex mart.
When you are going to jail anyways what is trademark infringement?
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their top level domain is .onion
theonion.com should sue for defamation :)
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Don't target the marketplaces, target the vendors on the marketplaces.
And how can the vendors on a marketplace be sure it's not a federal honeypot?
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;-)===)
Although MS was only selling downers, not my kind of thing...
Hire the Russians hackers to prevent police action (Score:1)
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All right, maybe they aren't Russian, I don't know. But why not try to find these uber-coders that you always hear about to do some pen testing of the Tor code? It's in their best interest to make sure Tor is as secure as possible.
Fairly certain the russian and the international hacker community in general is already doing this.
Of course a true pro would not be using a publicly accessible darknet, they'd run their own.
Re:Hire the Russians hackers to prevent police act (Score:4, Interesting)
All right, maybe they aren't Russian, I don't know. But why not try to find these uber-coders that you always hear about to do some pen testing of the Tor code? It's in their best interest to make sure Tor is as secure as possible.
What are you talking about? The only thing Tor does is add layers of indirection between the client and host, the data still needs to eventually be able to find a viable route between A and B. When a large percentage of connections using the TOR protocol end up at the same hand full of places, which is something that you can determine when you have access to a Tier 1 service providers records btw, then it helps narrow down the number of suspects you need to investigate. The only way to remain secure in that world is to remain small.
Re: Hire the Russians hackers to prevent police ac (Score:1)
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so no single point can link you to your destination
In this case there are (potentially) many points. No one node can connect the source and destination of a given connection, but if the attacker monitors or controls enough of the internal routing nodes then it's not that difficult to analyse the timing and build up a statistical model linking the endpoints over time. For that matter, a busy .onion site would tend to stand out no matter how obfuscated the routing, simply because of the increased traffic.
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That is not how hidden services work. They do not "exit" the TOR net at all and are hence indistinguishable from relays.
Re: Hire the Russians hackers to prevent police ac (Score:1)
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Good luck... (Score:1)
This is like trying to stop people from breathing... The illicit markets will NEVER die.
Man wants what he cannot have... This will NEVER change.
Its our Nature. Fighting our own nature... Is costing us more than we care to admit.
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The FBI/Police/DEA/etc. know that. But they need to put on the occasional show to justify their budgets and keep their jobs.
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Or do you just mean that the particular crimes we're talking about (selling drugs and child abuse images, predominantly) are ones you don't think should be illegal?
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So there is no such thing as crime, and all the law enforcement is just a vast job creation exercise?
Mostly, yes. If you look at different cities, and even different countries, there are differences in crime rates, and vast differences in numbers of police. But there is little correlation between the two. "More police" does not mean "less crime".
Or do you just mean that the particular crimes we're talking about (selling drugs and child abuse images, predominantly) are ones you don't think should be illegal?
Yes. This too.
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By the OP's logic, there shouldn't be any police because nothing should be a crime. People should be free to do whatever they want.
This of course leads to the wonderful situation where if my neighbor is offering 2 year olds for sex, I can go over and shoot them and not have to worry about any repercussions because neither situation is a crime.
In reality this has a great benefit because no longer would taxpayers have to pay to keep criminals housed and fed. Once they're dead, they're dead.
I think it's a win-
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Who do you think would be dead first? Sociopathic criminals or the nice people who oppose them?
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This is like trying to stop people from breathing... The illicit markets will NEVER die.
Man wants what he cannot have... This will NEVER change.
Its our Nature. Fighting our own nature... Is costing us more than we care to admit.
More like Man wants what his government has decided he should not have. But you're right, it is costing us a lot.
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Indeed. This is the dour "anti fun" coalition of authoritarians trying to enforce their screwed-up mind-set. While I personally do not use drugs besides sugar, caffeine, alcohol (with the first and the last killing more people than "illegal" drugs), I think that you should get medical-grade recreational drugs of all kinds known to mankind with professional usage instructions and at reasonable prices. Anything else is just utterly uncivilized and evil. If some puritans do not want to have fun, that is fine b
The dark net (Score:2)
I expect some of those 20221 products to be made of dark matter and powered by dark energy. Brought to you by Dark Helmet on a dark horse.
Also, let's all agree that "Evolution" is an amazingly shitty name for an online black market after "Silk Road", which was pretty inspired.
We should start a campaign to suggest better names for the next instance after Evolution.
I suggest:
The Dark Bazaar
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The biggest competitor to Evolution is named Agora [wikipedia.org] which is a pretty great name.
Why don't they just call it "Ayn Rand" or "The Eagle's Lair", that'd show the fucking Untermenschen who's the cool kid on the block.
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You're crossing your objectivists with your existentialists. Never cross objectivists with existentialists - they could produce offspring with enough unfettered superiority to destroy us all.
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Eurasian Land Bridge does not roll off the tongue. Maybe Bogie exchange?
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Dr. NO, is that you?
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Why not "Darkwin" ?
A mix between Darwin and Dark.
The dark net (Score:2)
We should start a campaign to suggest better names for the next instance after Evolution.
Intelligent Design?
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As it turns out, quite a few of these are not nearly as addictive or destructive as usually claimed. The "war on drugs" is also a "war on truth".
No kidding (Score:5, Interesting)
In other news, police arrest drug dealer on corner. New drug dealer replaces him that same night.
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Hey, no worries! (Score:2)
At some point - probably soon - they'll shut down the last one of these and then there won't be any more. That's how the war on drugs was won!
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At some point - probably soon - they'll shut down the last one of these and then there won't be any more. That's how the war on drugs was won!
If you want to truly win the war on drugs, then you need to go after the biggest drug dealers on the planet.
In case you were wondering, that would be the ones we allow to legally peddle their fucking addictions.
Yes, we should criminalise tobacco and alcohol, and hand out free crystal meth to schoolkids at break times.
That would solve everything.
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We already prescribe them kiddie coke(ritalin) and better speed than crystal(dextoamphetamine). Most kids take this for breakfast and lunch.
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The only way to truly win the war on drugs is to quit fighting. There's no way to "win" and no reason to continue. Rates of drug usage are as high or higher than they were before the war. You can see in Colorado that marijuana usage didn't increase when it became legal.
But us not fighting would actually be a win. The free market would make many drugs really cheap (like marijuana) and drive the criminal drug gangs out of business. Remember, Al Capone was a liquor distributor who lived 80 years ago and y
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At some point - probably soon - they'll shut down the last one of these and then there won't be any more. That's how the war on drugs was won!
If you want to truly win the war on drugs, then you need to go after the biggest drug dealers on the planet.
In case you were wondering, that would be the ones we allow to legally peddle their fucking addictions.
Don't forget the CIA and the banks that launder the money for them!
Prohibition does not work! (Score:2)
I can't determine if your post is sarcasm or not, but I'm pretty sure it's sarcasm. This post is really for the next guy assuming sarcasm was correct.
How many times do people have to read history to determine that prohibition does not work? The "War on Drugs" is a failure, alcohol prohibition was a failure, and Opium prohibition was another failure. How can anyone in good faith know history and claim that the answer is punishing consumers and/or bystanders? Simple, it can't be done in good faith because
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+1 funny.
Oh, you were serious? My condolences then on your non-functional mind.
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I know you are being sarcastic, but the number of people on this thread who need a reality check is just amazing.
Why are there no online drug stores running on regular non-Tor websites, accepting money via PayPal? Because they would get shut down and the operators arrested immediately. In fact there used to be one such site, called the Farmers Market, which pre-dated
Hail Hydra! (Score:3)
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Glad I'm not the only one who thought that. Then again, I just saw Captain America for the first time like 3 days ago.
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Hail to the hypnotoad.
News=Where to find drugs (Score:1)
I really enjoy the fact that the 'news' tells us where to go to buy our drugs now that Silk Road is down again. And reading the comments told me which top competitors to look for as well. Thanks 'the news'. And thanks Slashdot. Thanks to you I no longer have to face the world sober.
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Let's say you really wanted to buy drugs on-line because you thought it was a good idea for whatever reason. Do you trust your own ability not to be traced (which is paramount), in addition to the quality of encryption and other feats provided by your dealer. That's a real risk. Plus, how many of these sites are honeypots, (and when/if they get busted, and their encryption isn't up to snuff they might as well be honeypots for purposes of this discussion)? Buyer beware.
Evolution in this case means not only g [arstechnica.com]
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Also killing side-effects from unsafe manufacturing, deaths from too strong stuff, etc. Most recreational drugs can be used in an entirety safe manner and for the rest, medical grade still is a lot better than what you can get on the streets. Illegality does not stop anybody. The prohibitionists are insane and evil.
Whack a mole; it's govt. policy! (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as I'm concerned, the only really legitimate reason for govt. to have gone after the original Silk Road operator was the allegation that the guy placed a hit on someone else. The act of hiring someone to murder another person for you is pretty clearly illegal and the law should pursue that.
The act of running an anonymous marketplace website seems to me like it should fall under "common carrier" status. Of course, the govt. hasn't been interested in looking at things that way ever since the BBS era in the 1980's.
The fact remains though.... the U.S. post office surely helped facilitate the actual delivery of many of those illegal orders placed on Silk Road, yet we never talk about arresting the mailmen who delivered the packages. We never talk about raids on the post offices to search through boxes held there either.
When criminals conduct illegal business via phone calls, nobody ever blames the telco for selling them the circuit that allowed it to happen either.
If you want to argue that Silk Road type websites are illustrating collusion with the criminals by offering categories such as "illegal drugs" to post ads in? You might have a valid point there ... But it seems to me that's little more than a detail that such site operators could get around by simply making broad, more general categories that are clearly usable for LEGAL transactions as well as anything illegal in some countries.
So far, I haven't really heard any evidence that Silk Road 2's operator was directly INVOLVED in any criminal activity. (No requests to murder someone else, no selling or buying of illegal substances himself, etc.)
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Um, there might be arguments for what the Silk Road and similar sites have been doing, but this isn't it.
The Post Office in any country is not explicitly set up to facilitate illegal activity. You don't
re: understanding of the law (Score:2)
Umm... no. I think I understand the law pretty well. And just like I said, the mistake these guys made really just lies in the details. They could run the exact SAME software, the exact SAME way (requiring a Tor session to establish a connection to it), and get around the accusations of engaging in a conspiracy to sell narcotics by simply eliminating the names of categories of sales that are deemed illegal.
You can't prove that the site operator opted to run an anonymous site purely or primarily to hide th
Black list for authorities? (Score:2)
There was a recent post asking how authorities might have breached the Tor network.
A related question to ask might be "what can we do to increase our network privacy/security"?
I've often wondered if a "government authority" blacklist would be worthwhile. For example, the City Police near where you live probably surf from a fixed IP address at that location. We could maintain a list of such addresses and allow websites to subscribe to the list.
If an address geolocates to within 50 miles of Washington DC (or
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circular links (Score:2)
The link is to dailydot.com. Every link at dailydot is to another dailydot page. Yes, this often happens at slashdot, but it is a sign of, um, what should I call it? When you only link to your own site, you may not be serving the public as well as you could.
I'd like to see links to insightful pages outside the original site. That is increasingly harder to find. This 'Evolution' site is said to be the 'biggest Dark Net market of all time' and yet there is no link to it or to any site that has something usefu