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He Always Had a Dark Side

mastermind.atavist.com

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Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#151

Post by sophacles »

beeboop wrote: post #41
j1vms wrote: post #17

Could someone post a one or two paragraph TL;DR for people in here who don't have the time right now to read the entire piece? You can reasonably assume we do already a) know what tcrypt is, and b) know about the discontinuation annoucement almost two years ago. May the upvotes then be with you.

Really the only "big" information presented is that Paul Le Roux, a man arrested recently by the DEA, is very very likely the same person who was the early leader of TrueCrypt. It discuses his background a lot - he was an extremely intelligent child and teenager, who started shady business practices as early as 16 when he was arrested for selling porn. He was rather poor and led a shaky life in his early twenties, an…

Given that this is part 3 of a series about a drug-lord, I suspect that the author is hinting/leading us to think that the "unknown financier" is Paul Le Roux, without blatantly stating it. (either as a teaser for part 4, or because there's not enough dots connected yet).

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#152

Post by some1else »

adrusi wrote: post #80
jonknee wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visa would also be a middleman. Or even the post office if you only accepted mailed cash.

There's also gratipay, which doesn't take a cut. Still the credit card's cut, but gratipay offers bitcoin payments, which, if they implement it right, would eliminate the middleman (unless you count miners as middlemen) when the financee cashes out using bitcoin. If they implemented it wrong, then coinbase is the middleman.

Nobody even noticed the middle-ma'am though.

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#153

Post by sophacles »

tlrobinson wrote: post #46

By "arms dealer" do they mean "kind of sketchy online pharmacy entrepreneur"? Because I didn't see anything about weapons in this article. Perhaps that's still to come in part 2, but as of right now the title is extremely linkbaity. EDIT: title has been unlinkbaitified (previously "Truecrypt was written by a international arms dealer") EDIT2: title has been reverted to the linkbaity version (previously changed to the…

Note, this is part 3 already - parts 1 and 2 lay out more of the story.

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#154

Post by ksenzee »

CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #127
mirimir wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't you nervous about doxxing someone like that so thoroughly?

Why should they be nervous about doing their job? Also, one X, not two: https://stallman.org/doxing.html

> Don't make the mistake of pronouncing "Exxon" like "exon"; you will appear unsophisticated.

This is some really advanced trolling, on the level of the emperor's new clothes.

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#156

Post by nxzero »

bithush wrote: post #136
pakled_engineer wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's pretty much a Bond villain from those articles, like the UN claiming he funded militias in Somalia to harvest hallucinogenic plants and shipping arms to Liberia. Probably would've made the same amount of money charging for TC premium support instead of building a pancontinental empire of mercenaries and arms trafficking.

I think you underestimate how much can be made from arms trafficking!

Clearly the US makes a massive amount of cash selling weapons; yes, US is not an "arms dealer" - but likely comparable.

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#157

Post by [deleted] »

jonknee wrote: post #78
johnloeber wrote: post #77

Not to be pedantic, but you wrote "cutting out the middleman." Doesn't patreon take a small cut? Aren't they a middleman? (Though undoubtedly one taking a much smaller share than previous ones.)

Visa would also be a middleman. Or even the post office if you only accepted mailed cash.

[deleted]

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#158

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #142
rincebrain wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between learning private information and disclosing it. Publishing information on a particular private individual because the public's benefit is sufficiently great is a hard line to even vaguely pin down - a home address, all private contact methods, and enough personal data to forge their identity on a passport application is probably never warranted to publish, but you're going to acquire that…

Did I miss the place in these stories where the author published the subject's home address?

[deleted]

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#159

Post by jessaustin »

RyanZAG wrote: post #35
spullara wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To run a BBS you need nothing more than a C64, a 300 bps modem and a phone line. Also, I'm not sure if you know anything about phone phreaking but in the 80s it was pretty much the preferred method of connecting to BBSs internationally.

Yes but from a teenager in Krugersdorp? And South Africa did not have such easy access to the international telephone market. The country was in the middle of economic sanctions at the time - international calls had to be placed through a switchboard with the government run telecom monopoly provider - Telkom. They also cost a literal arm and a leg for a couple minutes and were heavily monitored by the Apartheid regim…

There probably weren't many such teenagers who did that. However, the likelihood that a particular such teenager did that, given that said teenager later wrote popular security software, seems pretty high.
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