The Dark Web Still Thrives After Silk Road 79
HughPickens.com writes: Russell Berman writes at The Atlantic that the government may have won its case against Silk Road's Ross Ulbricht, but the high-profile trial gave a lot of publicity to the dark web. Both the number of sites and the volume of people using them have increased since Silk Road was shuttered. "Just as on the rest of the internet, users on the dark net are very quick to move on to new things and move away from those products and websites that seem stale and old," says Adam Benson. The cat-and-mouse game between users of the dark web and law enforcement appears to be shifting as well. Newer dark sites (two major ones are Agora and Evolution) are likely to protect their servers by basing them in countries "hostile to U.S. law enforcement," says Nicholas Weaver. "The markets will keep moving overseas, but law enforcement will keep going after the dealers," Weaver says, referring to the people who actually ship and deliver the drugs sold online.
Evolution Marketplace is a much different animal than Silk Road, according to Dan Palumbo. Evolution sells "weapons, stolen credit cards, and more nefarious items that were forbidden on both versions of Silk Road. Silk Road sold a lot of dangerous things, but operators drew the line at their version of 'victimless crimes,' i.e. no child pornography, weapons, or identity theft. Now, four of the top five DarkNet Marketplaces sell weapons while three of the top five sell stolen financial data." This is a darker DarkNet and it speaks to the challenge facing law enforcement as they knock one set of bad actors offline, another comes along with bigger and bolder intentions.
Evolution Marketplace is a much different animal than Silk Road, according to Dan Palumbo. Evolution sells "weapons, stolen credit cards, and more nefarious items that were forbidden on both versions of Silk Road. Silk Road sold a lot of dangerous things, but operators drew the line at their version of 'victimless crimes,' i.e. no child pornography, weapons, or identity theft. Now, four of the top five DarkNet Marketplaces sell weapons while three of the top five sell stolen financial data." This is a darker DarkNet and it speaks to the challenge facing law enforcement as they knock one set of bad actors offline, another comes along with bigger and bolder intentions.
Re:Tor Project Should take some responsibility (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not blame ISPs and other network operators?
They are enabling all the criminal activity on the Internet, with or without some sort of VPN to hide behind.
Next thing you know, people are prosecuted for what they say because it caused someone else to go nuts .... ohh wait a minute ....
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Next thing you know, people are prosecuted for what they say because it caused someone else to go nuts
Charles Manson?
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I think we can probably find a middle ground between anarchy and totalitarianism.
Re:Tor Project Should take some responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
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Bad analogy. Anonymous Cowards on Slashdot have two attributes that make them unlike hidden services:
1) Slashdot can reveal their IP address at will
2) What they do can be either modded down by the community (if they're just posting garbage) or simply deleted if they're posting stuff that is outright illegal or deeply unethical (SSN dumps or whatever)
So Slashdot provides a limited form of anonymity with controls on it to prevent excessive abuse, and this is a good thing - although there's a lot of crap posti
Re:Tor Project Should take some responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
In addition, making providers of a platform (be it TOR, and ISP, or a discussion board) responsible for the content being moved over that platform is rather impractical. If such responsibility is legally enforced, it'll be the end of the open Internet. And of privacy and encryption, by the way (though I see a new market for steganography)
Re:Tor Project Should take some responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
Some say that anonymity is a fundamental right, like free speech.
Some say that there's no such thing, but that free speech is necessary if you want a free society, and that anonymity is necessary for free speech, thus it should be protected.
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Some say that anonymity is a fundamental right, like free speech.
Some say that there's no such thing, but that free speech is necessary if you want a free society, and that anonymity is necessary for free speech, thus it should be protected.
All we know is, he's called the Stig.
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The TOR bundle Isn't so much a tool for anonymity, which it can grant as long as you are careful (much like a virtual mask or avatar) as it ia digital cloak of privacy. This aspect is important to distinguish for people struggling to understand the hows and whys governing the role of TOR and dark web meshes. The ideal state one would want once inside would be both disguised and cloaked i. E. anonymous and private.
Fundamental rights? (Score:3)
I've heard it said that when you get right down to it, there really are no "Fundamental rights" -- because every single "right" you have is only due to others' willingness to respect that boundary, or your ability to keep it that way through threat of violence.
(You can speak of your "basic human rights" all you want, but if I have no respect for them and I have the power to trample on them that's greater than your power to resist -- how much good is that doing you?)
At the end of the day, it all seems to jus
Re:Tor Project Should take some responsibility (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit. I ran an exit node for quite a while and look at me, posting here, with no convictions for anything other than driving with a license I didn't realize had expired (which, IMO is a petty thing to haul a person into court over, the entire justice system really is a jobs program).
So nice try but, the only reason I stopped running an exit node was the hassle involved from anti-spammers. Even though my exit node didn't allow exit on port 25 or any other mail related ports except pop and imap.... even though.... sometimes the operators of other mail servers get a bug in their ass about accepting mail from a tor exit node.
Re:Tor Project Should take some responsibility (Score:4, Insightful)
If you create an anonymity network, those of us who have worked in forensics know the depravity and criminality that it will attract
If you create a law enforcement framework which hoards power jealously and does its best to prevent openness, those of us who are thoughtful citizens know the depravity [miamiherald.com] and criminality [al.com] that it will attract [photograph...acrime.com].
If you want to run an anonymity network - dont be so naive as to say it's for the greater good.
If you want to run an organized crime network, don't be so disingenuous as to say it's for the greater good.
I note that you're hiding behind anonymity, and that you're a depraved criminal, so I guess that there's something to what you say...
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you cannot sort into good and evil, if everyone is anonymous.
Evil Web? (Score:5, Informative)
When did Dark Web become Evil Web?
It used to be the the Dark Web was simply those sites that were not being indexed by major search engines. Nothing more, nothing less, just those sites that were not being shown to the average search engine users.
It did not indicate that the sites were doing something "dodgy" but they were bad at SEO or just had no links going to them. They were undiscoverable.
Re:Evil Web? (Score:5, Informative)
No, you are thinking of the 'deep web'.
Dark Web has always been the 'secret' side of the 'net. It just used to be more interesting,
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Not really; we just used to be younger and more impressionable.
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Not really; we just used to be younger and more impressionable.
Well "back in the day" as it were, a Dark Net used to require you to basically set up a whole separate network infrastructure inside the World Wide Web, which I think is kinda cooler than the "everybody join in"-way of TOR.
Those old school darknets also used to be *way* more exclusive.
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private networks aren't exactly the same thing as dark nets as such.. or is ibm running a "dark net"? by most definitions no.
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private networks aren't exactly the same thing as dark nets as such.. or is ibm running a "dark net"? by most definitions no.
Granted, the 'dark' specifier implies a certain degree of secrecy and exclusivity.
Totally not thriving (Score:2, Insightful)
I can tell everyone with certainty that dark web markerplaces are all bogus and they shouldn't even bother lookimg. You'll just get lots of malware, infested with botnets and get your identity stolen. Here be dragons, abandon all hope ye who enter. Bitcoins are a pyramid scheme and also might carry the measles virus. Basically really nothing to talk about if you know what I mean.
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"We sell stolen credit card numbers! To purchase one, simply provide us with your name, credit card number and security code."
Re: Totally not thriving (Score:1)
I took it as an attempt at "this candy tastes horrible, I'd better eat it all myself if you know what I mean".
These market places only exist as long as people are few and shady, the very moment they get attention and make it big they also attract law enforcement.
Personally I haven't done any dark net shopping, but my friends who used to do this almost always got what they ordered.
Re: Totally not thriving (Score:4, Insightful)
Only thing I ever bought on such a site myself was some hard to find but otherwise legal (might have been amt? been a while). These drugs tend to move in darker circles because they are legal to posess but not to sell "for human consumption", and tend to be made illegal once they get discovered, that is, if they get at all popular.
Same experience though, saw product, placed order, sent bitcoin.....got product as advertised.
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Where do you get your certainty from? I'm just curious.
A while ago I wanted to see what I could find on the deep web even though nothing illegal interests me but I just wanted to look at what's going on. Based on the associated forums at least, some people had either put in a lot of effort into making it look like various people were discussing carding, drugs etc. or some sales were actually going on. Arguably, I don't think any of those "buy X stolen cc numbers" are real since shouldn't whoever has them be using them until they've been locked.
Nope. There's much less risk trading CC details than there is using those CC for buying things - to buy things one have to take a risk of actually being arrested, to trade numbers one needs essentially no exposure.
N.B. that most people that sells CC details are actually resellers and so have no actual connection with the CC number collection. Buying X numbers and reselling them in smaller lots is almost risk free... Sadly.
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Where do you get your certainty from? I'm just curious.
A while ago I wanted to see what I could find on the deep web even though nothing illegal interests me but I just wanted to look at what's going on. Based on the associated forums at least, some people had either put in a lot of effort into making it look like various people were discussing carding, drugs etc. or some sales were actually going on. Arguably, I don't think any of those "buy X stolen cc numbers" are real since shouldn't whoever has them be using them until they've been locked. Same thing with buying stuff from "vendors" who are cheap because they buy it with stolen cards or such. Or the more or less laughable hitmen. Of course I lack the experience of a criminal so I don't know when a weapons or drugs sale seems legit but to me those on the big sites absolutely did.
That's what you can get to from the outside. There are also sites that are fully encrypted and invitation only. You can't just find them on the web, you have to know someone.
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At the very least, should you get less than expected purchasing something from someone who steals for a living, you are required to respond with I should have seen that coming.
Besides, all the really gifted folks who skirt the law for profit make a better living in brokerages and banking.
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Silk Road did sell weapons, ID theft (Score:5, Interesting)
Ulbricht set up a sister site called The Armory at some point which did sell a range of weapons including very dangerous ones like RPG launchers. Silk Road also sold forged IDs and malware (e.g. that could be used to empty bank accounts). His definition of "victimless crime" was a very poorly thought out and inconsistent one.
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Just the launchers, with no grenades? those aren't dangerous. Legal with a tax stamp in past decades though I don't know about now. Grenades however, that would be a problem.
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Well forged IDs are not necessarily used for a crime with a victim, they don't have to be in a real persons name, and if a bank account is all thats opened well. A person using a fake id to rent servers, who pays up front for the service isn't victimizing anyone.
As for weapons....lol I wonder if any were even sold. I bet that entire darkweb site was just cops buying stuff from cops trying to sting eachother.
Also, weapons are a persons right to bear, the US constitution recognizes that as a right more fundam
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Indeed... private party sales of firearms is already a healthy, legal market. It would be stupid to sell them illegally. (Not that people don't do stupid things.)
Selling anything that requires an FFL, however, is likely to get a lot of attention very quickly, so not likely to be a sustainable business model at all.
Also Bitcoin sucks for anonymity -- you'd be better off using a prepaid debit card.
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I agree! The Constitution says everyone has a right to a gun, or something along those lines.
So I'm going to give a gun to a three year old child named Joe, who lives next door. It's his constitutional right, according to you. I hope he learns to read soon, so he can read the owner's manual. Then he'll know where the safety is on the gun.
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Did that actually sound clever or make sense when you posted it? I don't know what more to say other than you clearly don't seem to understand some very basic concepts to such an amazing level I don't even feel I have the time to begin.
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Yes I understand that is their opinion, one of the many reasons I see Washington as little more than a gang my state should be separating from.
The weakest link in all this (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ask yourself this, darknet warrior, how many close friends would you trust with information that could severely impair your freedom of movement?
Now, how many strangers?
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Mailing a single item of contraband is likely to go unnoticed by the postal service or a privately owned shipping company. Everything in this universe is a game of percentages though, and if you ship enough contraband packages someone will eventually slip up... most likely a recipient of your dark services.
Ask yourself this, darknet warrior, how many close friends would you trust with information that could severely impair your freedom of movement?
Now, how many strangers?
I'll guess that you haven't actually bought anything from such a website. Small packages are almost impossible to trace back to the shipper due to the way they are mailed. Most sellers would buy some stamps using cash and take them home. Stuff the goods into a small flat-rate box or envelope, add printed labels using the return address of a randomly-selected legitimate local small business, and drop it in a mailbox in a different location from the post office and on a different day. Hopefully they did
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I have not heard about any busts of low-level dealers shipping less than 1 pound (the limit for dropping in a mailbox).
I agree with most of what you say but how likely is it you will ever hear about someone being busted for selling an ounce of coke (or whatever)? Unless said person is a celebrity/VIP the press won't be interested in reporting it. The only other way you'd hear about it is if you were involved in some way, i.e it was a friend/relative or you are in law enforcement.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Not Very Surprising (Score:2)
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Yes, much better to put a non-violent drug dealer in jail even though you have to release rapists to do it. (Yes, I know that TDPR was involved in some more "traditional" bad behavior, and I agree with his punishment for those acts.)
Nonsense. We're trying to concentrate all wealth and power into the control of a few obscenely wealthy people. In that respect, we're doing great.
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Careful now, that sounds suspiciously like the godless language of socialist communism!
.onion is easy (Score:3)
I recently put my blog on the .onion. You can get to it via the "normal web" via it's .com address, via google searches and whatnot, or you can use a .onion address to get the same stuff. I have to say, it was pathetically simple to set up, and I encourage everyone with a server of their own to do the same. Feel free to upgrade to a Tor relay if you have bandwidth too.
You may well ask what's the point? Well, my motivation was to see how easy it was, and to increase the amount of content available on the .onion network. I'm pretty sure the only people who've ever visited it are me and one friend of mine, but the fact there's another IP on the internet talking to Tor nodes, and the fact that on very rare occasions those Tor nodes talk back to it makes me feel good.
If ever I have too much spare time, maybe I'll make a search engine for .onion addresses...? ;-)
Back on topic: the Silk Road had a restrictions policy (albeit an inconsistent one), but other people have no such qualms. The authorities have succeeded in one sense in that they've fragmented the market, they've also put some additional risk onto the purchaser because it's now less clear how legit the site or vendor are. However, they've enabled someone looking for something minor like a bit of weed to also find all manner of other things. I'm sure someone looking for an RPG would have found one with or without the SR, but someone looking for weed might start thinking "I could also buy an RPG", where they might not have done before. In that sense, shutting down SR was a failure.
Ultimately, if there's a demand, there'll be supply. Shutting down websites of any kind doesn't alter demand very much, and so there'll always be supply. If the authorities wanted to do anything about this, they'd spend more time working on the demand side of the problem. Sadly, that doesn't have instant results, doesn't get headlines and for every success it has there's a notable failure too.
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Ultimately, if there's a demand, there'll be supply. Shutting down websites of any kind doesn't alter demand very much, and so there'll always be supply. If the authorities wanted to do anything about this, they'd spend more time working on the demand side of the problem. Sadly, that doesn't have instant results, doesn't get headlines and for every success it has there's a notable failure too.
For lengthy citation, google the war on drugs. It has much in common with another government performance we refer to as security theatre.
Whenever a drug kingpin is taken down in Central America, or a corner street dealer comes down with a case of arrested, there is no shortage of applicants for the newly vacated position.
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Why would you have a .onion domain AND a .com for the same site? It's a bigger risk for your users -- assuming that's why you offer it -- since if they visit your site through .com instead of .onion, their identity is (potentially) exposed.
That said, relays are nearly pointless (in that they're not the bottleneck of the network), and Tor itself is nearly pointless. Without edge security, it's little more than a feel-good effort that gives a false sense of security. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
There
Not a secret if everyone knows about it (Score:3)
Nor will it be around long. James bond gets away with being a well known spy because his writers handle the plot. In real life that just doesn't work,.
Hydra (Score:1)
They're going to have to get more clever with how they fight this than the previously have. And that doesn't mean just shutting stuff like Tor and strong encryption down, because they'll also return stronger than they were.
THE solution (Score:2)
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The problem is, that would be illegal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]
They can not just search mail, does not matter if it is a dog or opening the letter and inspecting it.
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Re:THE solution (Score:4, Insightful)
I looked into how this can possibly work. Apparently they go to the post office and send their drug shipment with priority mail. WHAT THE HELL?! So spend like $50,000 on one drug sniffing dog at each major USPS hub. Problem solved. Then when those idiots resort to in-person trades, arrest them in sting operations. How has the FBI not figured this out yet?!
So, what do you do? Rip open every package the dog alerts to? What about the false positives? Would you like to risk having your package destroyed every time you mailed one? Do you realize how much mail goes through the USPS every day? How much do you think inspecting every package would slow things down? Do you know the Constitution only allows searches with a warrant describing the place to be searched and the object of the search? Have I asked enough questions for one reply? How about one more?
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Not to mention that a single drug-sniffing dog can only operate for a few hours before needing to rest, otherwise the rate of false positives start to go up dramatically.
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Don't say I didn't warn you. (Score:2)
Newer dark sites are likely to protect their servers by basing them in countries "hostile to U.S. law enforcement."
Why does the geek always assume that "keeping our servers in countries hostile to US law enforcement" translates as "we won't mine your data for our own purposes or quietly sell you out to agencies foreign and domestic when the price is right?"
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I don't know about "the" geek, but I'm curious whether, say, Somalia's government is organized enough to set up a PRISM-level metadata collection scheme across its entire communication infrastructure.
Personally, though, I assume that the NSA is double-tapping all of the communications in all of the countries outside of the US since they're already tapping all of the communications inside of it.