Live data from Hacker News

Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

politie.nl

241–250 of 381 posts

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#241
post #25
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

A dead man's switch could wipe the server and all backups to erase evidence. The police in this case let the server run for months to catch other sellers. A well hidden software trigger would have been hard for the police to notice without a thorough inspection of all the source code.

As the article states, "Immediately after the arrest of the administrators, these servers and their corresponding infrastructure were seized and an exact copy of the market place was transferred to Dutch servers".

A dead man's switch can't wipe the server and all backups, imaging the machine is the first thing one does (before e.g. attempting to log in); the only thing that may vary if you dump the machine with or without turning it off, e.g. getting a memory image by direct hardware access of a live system or imaging disks (and possibly RAM as well, the chips can be read if they're cooled and re-inserted quickly) after cutting the power.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#242

How many lessons do people need before they learn? Prohibition doesn't work. It creates more violence than it solves.

So you don't think we should prohibit anything? Should we just let people buy fentanyl by the kilogram without any repercussions? Sure, we should reform drug laws so that user's are not punished as significantly, but completely removing prohibition of drugs I think is pretty counterproductive, considering how the US already has a major opioid problem. Prohibition will obviously reduce drug use to some degree, so it's just a matter of balancing the costs and benefits.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Untrue according to the crabs article interview with the woman "Petra Haandrikman, team leader of the Dutch police unit that infiltrated Hansa." https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/07/exclusive-dutch-cops-on-... "H: Yes, we called them “AlphaBay refugees.” It wasn’t the technical challenge that caused problems. Because this was a police operation, we wanted to keep up with the orders to see if there were any large amoun…

To me, that sounds like they were looking for resellers more than users

point taken, I had not read it this way originally but your interpretation makes sense

edit: I knew I saw something about this somewhere earlier today. Still, this proves nothing because it's source less.

https://www.politie.nl/en/news/2017/july/20/underground-hans... "Some 10,000 foreign addresses of Hansa Market buyers were passed on to Europol"

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is a semantic argument. The comment I replied to was making the argument that alcohol use is widespread because it has no legal competition. This does not appear to be the case to me, thus undermining the argument.

If someone gets off work and wants to get loaded to forget about their problems, are they more likely to get a 12-pack of beer or a pack of cigarettes?

Both

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is a semantic argument. The comment I replied to was making the argument that alcohol use is widespread because it has no legal competition. This does not appear to be the case to me, thus undermining the argument.

Nicotine and caffeine are drugs but when did you last hear of people crashing cars or killing other people because they were high on nicotine or caffeine. I'm sure it's an ancillary factor and if you could investigate with strict accuracy you'd find they had a non-zero influence. But putting them on the same semantic plane as you are doing implies that people in the grip of a nicotine or caffeine buzz are little diff…

I agree with what you say, but that means alcohol is more damaging because it's more dangerous, not because it has no competition.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But where did they get the 3 year old email. 1) They were investigating AlphaBay for nearly 3 years 2) They came upon somehow control of an email address which contained 3 year old mail that contained the password reset email 3) They are capturing and storing large amounts of tor traffic much like the NSA does on clearnet see: xkeyscore This isn't really explained in the indictment

This is a really interesting question. Knowing how they got access to such an old email from an external source.

Perhaps it's from someone they were investigating for other crimes. I mean, it doesn't seem beyond the realm of possibility that law enforcement were going after say, a drug dealer who was using the site to sell goods, and found the welcome email from the platform he or she was using in their inbox.

That seems like one plausible possibility.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#248
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>being gay is illegal in many places. Is that true? Or is it the behavior that's illegal?

I think what you're trying to ask is: Is being labeled gay grounds for imprisonment? Or does one have to be caught in the act of fornicating with a male to be imprisoned? I'm sure it depends on the jurisdiction, but many jurisdictions that have this kind of explicit law usually frowns upon homosexuality so much, that the mere accusation is enough to be damaging.

> Or does one have to be caught in the act of fornicating with a male [...]

I think your definition needs some work.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#249
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the issue with this line of reasoning is selective enforcement. If the law is unjust and commonly broken, it is fair to be outraged if they choose to target you for punishment. Drug laws are broken every day, and in some cities LEOs are even working with the dealers. Unjust laws allow them to pick on people they don't like and people that threaten their business. Given these circumstances, I think it's still…

Fair point. Sometimes I think the police state that America has become was in large part facilitated by this kind of thing. Almost everyone is in violation of something these days. If the police or the state don't like you then surprise surprise... you're getting arrested for that thing you've been doing for the past decade that half your neighbours do too...

That's exactly the definition of police state. I remember it being used to describe China, can't quite the source though. Sorry

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nicotine and caffeine are drugs but when did you last hear of people crashing cars or killing other people because they were high on nicotine or caffeine. I'm sure it's an ancillary factor and if you could investigate with strict accuracy you'd find they had a non-zero influence. But putting them on the same semantic plane as you are doing implies that people in the grip of a nicotine or caffeine buzz are little diff…

I agree with what you say, but that means alcohol is more damaging because it's more dangerous, not because it has no competition.

I agree 100% with you on the substantive issue.
Post reply on HN