Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down • Hacker News Board

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#91

Post by hackermailman » Thu, Jul 20, 2017, 4:57 PM UTC

RutZap wrote: post #37

I think this is brilliant. A very efficient way of policing and removing a lot of drugs from the market without spending a lot of public money and wasting time on the streets. Also the darknet is great as it reduces the violence associated with drug crime, by taking the drugs off the streets and into the legitimate courier business. You have to love technology sometimes.

A lot of org crime mail order wholesale to distribute at street level, it's how fentanyl got into my country so doesn't stop street trade. Same with Australia there are gangs here that flood the mail system with meth and fentanyl to their gang counterparts there hoping some get through as prices 3x higher there so can afford losses. Ending prohibition would shut all this down though I can't see any politicians surviving a reelection if they do.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#92

Post by mindcrime » Thu, Jul 20, 2017, 4:59 PM UTC

ryanlol wrote: post #26

Dream Market is still up since Nov 2013. (1 year older than even AlphaBay) Perhaps they're the ones that are actually based in Russia ;P You seriously have to be a moron to host your DNM in Canada or NL though, NL LE especially has many years of experience and millions worth of equipment for these investigations. Pick a place where they're less likely to have advanced DMA equipment handy! Even better though, is to ch…

It leads one to wonder... what is the "best" place to host servers if you're going to run a darkweb market? Seems like you'd want a place where the government/police/spooks aren't as tech savvy and sophisticated, and perhaps somewhere where the government isn't on the best terms with traditional Western powers.

Venezuela? But do they even have electricity for running servers?

Maybe some smaller African nations? Botswana? Mali? Burkina Faso? Togo? But what's the state of 'net connectivity there? Is sufficient bandwidth available? Are there colo centers or hosting providers there? I honestly don't know...

Other possibilities?

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#93

Post by scotty79 » Thu, Jul 20, 2017, 4:59 PM UTC

z3phyr wrote: post #73

forgotpwtomain wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That database must be a wet dream for law enforcement. Because obviously people buying a few pills of ecstasy or a tab of LSD are a serious danger to society and should be taken of the streets. /s

People under influence do indeed pose danger to other people. Even the influence of alcohol is potentially dangerous in certain situations leading to incidents ranging from hit and run to domestic violence.

Even alcohol? Alcohol is the most endangering drug. Because of wide spread use (no competition because in many places it's the only legal drug), addictiveness, toxicity and intrinsic nastiness of influence it has on some users.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#94

Post by numbsafari » Thu, Jul 20, 2017, 5:00 PM UTC

TillE wrote: post #28

deanclatworthy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an over engineered solution, and I never understood the value of these warrant canaries etc. In the right set of circumstances you would be compelled to hand over any keys (with their passphrase) in an investigation like this, and failure to do so would result in harsher penalties. People are the weak link here.

This is fanciful. It assumes both extreme competence and legal powers to compel just about anything, neither of which generally exist. You can often be forced to unlock encrypted data as part of evidence gathering, but there's no legal power to make you conduct arbitrary processes which only exist in your head.

If you are a valuable enough target, "legal power" isn't the issue...

https://xkcd.com/538/

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#95

Post by netsharc » Thu, Jul 20, 2017, 5:00 PM UTC

aqme28 wrote: post #5

tomjen3 wrote: post #3

>This was made possible by the arrest of the two administrators of Hansa Market in Germany, aged 30 and 31. Since their arrest, the two men, from Siegen, NorthRhine-Westphalia, have been kept in pre-trial detention, and are only allowed to have contact with their lawyers. So admins of the other markets: always have a dead-mans switch.

I'm curious how you would construct a switch that couldnt be bypassed by the police once they have full access to the servers.

I'm more curious about how the police were able to transfer the operation to servers under their control. Maybe Docker? Haha. My first guess would be that the admins were lazy and never encrypted their systems. Or maybe the cops got them to spill out the password (or hacked it out of one of their systems).

In another hypothetical, I wonder if one can give one's lawyer the (password-protected) decryption key, and he can only release it when one signs a letter saying "I hereby request the keys under my own will with no duress.". If the cops are making him hand over the keys, the lawyer knows that's bullshit and can't legally be allowed to handover said key...

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#96

Post by ipnon » Thu, Jul 20, 2017, 5:03 PM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #62

ipnon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting to compare damages caused by the release of this information versus damages caused by the production, sale, and usage of the drugs themselves.

How would you measure either?

You could measure in deaths, lost productivity, or effect on tax revenue, any sort of typical economic measure really.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#97

Post by jimmyk » Thu, Jul 20, 2017, 5:03 PM UTC

atemerev wrote: post #34

ch8230 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems fair to lump in with the rest since it was in fact an illegal market place.

Not everything that is illegal is wrong. E.g. being gay is illegal in many places.

>being gay is illegal in many places.

Is that true? Or is it the behavior that's illegal?

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#98

Post by Allower » Thu, Jul 20, 2017, 5:03 PM UTC

For shame

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#99

Post by nfbush » Thu, Jul 20, 2017, 5:04 PM UTC

captainmuon wrote: post #65

I would love to know how they got caught. There is probably something to learn about opsec from this. The paranoid side of me says Tor is unsafe (due to whatever - the authorities having backdoors on most hosting services, on your PC, due to the encryption being cracked by some unknown breakthrough or due to 90% of entry nodes being controlled by NSA). And NSA and FBI and co just have hundreds of people working on "p…

Every time a market has been taken down it's been due to OPSEC failure and other information leaks (e.g. Silk Road captcha IP leak, DPR's advertising of market being linked to his personal email address). AlphaBay Which got taken down first in this operation was due to a personal email being included in the header of the welcome email sent out to new users 3 years ago [1]

[1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/982821/downlo... (pdf)

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#100

Post by Allower » Thu, Jul 20, 2017, 5:05 PM UTC

5_minutes wrote: post #10

The clever thing is that they took it over and for one month monitored it without the users knowing. Everyone on obfuscating their persona with Tor and bitcoins, still had to enter their postal addresses on the website, to receive the goodies. That database must be a wet dream for law enforcement.

despicable