A dark web tycoon pleads guilty, but how was he caught? • Hacker News Board

Re: A dark web tycoon pleads guilty, but how was he caught?

#21

Post by newnewpdro » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 6:12 PM UTC

rahuldottech wrote: post #5

Hacker Factor has a series of articles about various attacks on Tor: https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/868-De... The tor daemon really needs to be re-written and audited. Apparently the codebase right now is a huge mess.

Running a hosting service is sure to include far more exploitable surface area than the tor network itself.

Just assume any one of their servers were vulnerable to RCE attacks, they hosted dynamic web sites on conventional web hosting stacks! These things leak deanonymizing information like a sieve.

Re: A dark web tycoon pleads guilty, but how was he caught?

#22

Post by HideousKojima » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 6:12 PM UTC

zelly wrote: post #20

Causality1 wrote: post #10

It's strange to me that people who make a habit of doing fantastically illegal things on the internet are always so sloppy about it. Even if they don't have the technical ability to break into their neighbor's wifi or set up a long range antenna to connect to an open access point they can still get a burner smartphone and drive to a Starbucks. Back when I used to torrent my TV shows I didn't even let my piracy laptop…

> drive to a Starbucks Didn't help Ross. It's a bad idea to do illegal stuff in public.

Ross was dumb enough to get fake passports/ids shipped directly to his home address

Re: A dark web tycoon pleads guilty, but how was he caught?

#23

Post by ohithereyou » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 6:16 PM UTC

pier25 wrote: post #3

OTOH if these techniques and vulnerabilities were made public it would benefit cybercriminals as they could defend themselves better.

Okay, and?

By that logic, the government shouldn't ever have to describe its investigative methods and prove they both comport with the law and accepted science because if their investigative methods are known then criminals benefit.

Re: A dark web tycoon pleads guilty, but how was he caught?

#24

Post by jascii » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 6:18 PM UTC

The central premise of the article is that there is no disclosure regarding the vulnerability used, suggesting the existence of some unknown zero-day exploit..

Various well documented analysis have linked this incident to "EgotisticalGiraffe", a well known -- and since fixed vulnerability.

FUD or lazy journalism? I mean, at least read the subjects Wikipedia page before publishing something..

Re: A dark web tycoon pleads guilty, but how was he caught?

#25

Post by onetimemanytime » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 6:20 PM UTC

DINKDINK wrote: post #16

pier25 wrote: post #3

OTOH if these techniques and vulnerabilities were made public it would benefit cybercriminals as they could defend themselves better.

>if these techniques and vulnerabilities were made public[...] Should the government prove that it followed the law when investigating a criminal? Did they obtain the proper warrants that people recognize preserve stable law and order? It's unreasonable to assume that the vulnerability, that brought this case to justice, is the last one that could ever be used. More so, if you assume that most people are good and a h…

>>Should the government prove that it followed the law when investigating a criminal? Did they obtain the proper warrants that people recognize preserve stable law and order?

That is the concern. A lot of people say "you either did it or not" but the Fourth Amendment disagrees...any evidence must be obtained by following the law.

Re: A dark web tycoon pleads guilty, but how was he caught?

#26

Post by agoristen » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 6:21 PM UTC

This report came out only a few months before he was caught: https://www.reddit.com/r/onions/comments/1guiav/we_have_anal...

He was likely de-anonymized through this technique or similar. The issue was that he trusted the Tor network to keep him anonymous and paid for the servers with his real identity.

Re: A dark web tycoon pleads guilty, but how was he caught?

#27

Post by jascii » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 6:22 PM UTC

Causality1 wrote: post #10

It's strange to me that people who make a habit of doing fantastically illegal things on the internet are always so sloppy about it. Even if they don't have the technical ability to break into their neighbor's wifi or set up a long range antenna to connect to an open access point they can still get a burner smartphone and drive to a Starbucks. Back when I used to torrent my TV shows I didn't even let my piracy laptop…

I suspect that if you have a useful understanding of information security there are better/easier/less risky ways to make money then crime..

Re: A dark web tycoon pleads guilty, but how was he caught?

#28

Post by strictnein » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 6:24 PM UTC

Pigo wrote: post #7

The military needs, or needed, Tor to be functioning and anonymous for their own use, correct?

Tor was created to help dissidents of other nations communicate. The military does not run on Tor.

Re: A dark web tycoon pleads guilty, but how was he caught?

#29

Post by gwbas1c » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 6:27 PM UTC

Causality1 wrote: post #10

It's strange to me that people who make a habit of doing fantastically illegal things on the internet are always so sloppy about it. Even if they don't have the technical ability to break into their neighbor's wifi or set up a long range antenna to connect to an open access point they can still get a burner smartphone and drive to a Starbucks. Back when I used to torrent my TV shows I didn't even let my piracy laptop…

Where there's a will, there's a way.

The internet is designed to send data from point A to point B. Keeping point A and point B truly anonymous means that the internet won't work.

Tools like Tor don't really protect you, it's more like they make it hard enough to figure out who you are that only people with strong incentives will track you down.

Re: A dark web tycoon pleads guilty, but how was he caught?

#30

Post by Analemma_ » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 6:32 PM UTC

Causality1 wrote: post #10

It's strange to me that people who make a habit of doing fantastically illegal things on the internet are always so sloppy about it. Even if they don't have the technical ability to break into their neighbor's wifi or set up a long range antenna to connect to an open access point they can still get a burner smartphone and drive to a Starbucks. Back when I used to torrent my TV shows I didn't even let my piracy laptop…

> It's strange to me that people who make a habit of doing fantastically illegal things on the internet are always so sloppy about it.

This is completely the wrong way to think about it. Remember the Defender's Dilemma: to run an illegal business like this, your opsec needs to be perfect: every single possible channel of information leakage (including the "unknown unknowns"), every minute, every hour, every day, forever. You need to be lucky every time, the feds only need to be lucky once.

When you focus on the specific mistakes that people made and thus call them "sloppy", you're missing all the things they did right; you might not have made those mistakes if you were in their position, but you would've made different mistakes.