Shedding light on the dark web
economist.com
Shedding light on the dark web
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Re: Shedding light on the dark web
#2Couldn't reverse tracing work? A fed poses as a customer, and uses a PO Box to receive goods, but also registers this in the Fedex, USPS, UPS databases, such that if this address appears anywhere on a package, it is traced to determine the origin. Build a network over time, repeat.
Re: Shedding light on the dark web
#3Darknet markets are like Hydra with 10 heads, when Silk Road is taken down, more players entered and when one other dark-market owners closed shop and jumped with vendors bit-coins, new ones with multi-escrow showed up. Again, with each take down people are improvising and making the system a bit more resilient.
Re: Shedding light on the dark web
#4Couldn't reverse tracing work? A fed poses as a customer, and uses a PO Box to receive goods, but also registers this in the Fedex, USPS, UPS databases, such that if this address appears anywhere on a package, it is traced to determine the origin. Build a network over time, repeat.
That is a common tactic used in cases like this.
Re: Shedding light on the dark web
#5Couldn't reverse tracing work? A fed poses as a customer, and uses a PO Box to receive goods, but also registers this in the Fedex, USPS, UPS databases, such that if this address appears anywhere on a package, it is traced to determine the origin. Build a network over time, repeat.
The FBI cannot legally trace USPS mail without a warrant, but can with Fedex, UPS, et. al. Almost all US darknet shipments go through USPS for this reason.
Re: Shedding light on the dark web
#6Couldn't reverse tracing work? A fed poses as a customer, and uses a PO Box to receive goods, but also registers this in the Fedex, USPS, UPS databases, such that if this address appears anywhere on a package, it is traced to determine the origin. Build a network over time, repeat.
They could build a Physical Onion Router. Send package to a node, which opens it to find a smaller package already addressed to another location. Similar to TOR each hop will increase security at the expense of resource utilization.
Re: Shedding light on the dark web
#7Congrats gwern for being written up in the Economist. Your research exposing the dark web (including your own battles with being implicated for wrongdoing) are commendable.
Re: Shedding light on the dark web
#8Couldn't reverse tracing work? A fed poses as a customer, and uses a PO Box to receive goods, but also registers this in the Fedex, USPS, UPS databases, such that if this address appears anywhere on a package, it is traced to determine the origin. Build a network over time, repeat.
This is where good opsec would come in. Use postal boxes in many different locations. Be wary of cameras that could get an image of you or your plate. Don't carry your smartphone.
Re: Shedding light on the dark web
#9Couldn't reverse tracing work? A fed poses as a customer, and uses a PO Box to receive goods, but also registers this in the Fedex, USPS, UPS databases, such that if this address appears anywhere on a package, it is traced to determine the origin. Build a network over time, repeat.
The FBI cannot legally trace USPS mail without a warrant, but can with Fedex, UPS, et. al. Almost all US darknet shipments go through USPS for this reason.
Thats an interesting competitive advantage for USPS.
Re: Shedding light on the dark web
#10Using gwerns data I put together stats on the likelihood that vendors who sell one product sell another here:
http://ryancompton.net/2015/03/24/darknet-market-basket-anal...
All the parsed data is available as a csv as well. I was surprised how well substance relationships could be recovered from vendor co listings