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German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

barrons.com

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Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#11

Post by viraptor »

thinkloop wrote: post #5
dang wrote: post #3

Url changed from https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/worlds-largest-darknet-... , which points to this. " Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

How did you find out it wasn't the original? I didn't realize bitcoin magazine did that. The quotes in the title should be around "world's largest" only (since they're about the inability to fully know what's happening on the dark web)

There's a > quote in the article.

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#12

Post by de_nied »

0xy wrote: post #7
thinkloop wrote: post #2

In theory it is possible to run a bitcoin tor marketplace anonymously, but in practice, given a long enough timeline, mistakes will happen and chances of getting caught approach 100%. I wonder what mistakes were made here.

You'll never know the real timeline because law enforcement lie about the use of parallel construction to build cases. We know that Tor isn't resistant to state-based attackers, so my money is always on global surveillance networks picking up missteps by the operators. "Whoops I forgot to turn my VPN on and SSH'ed into one of the servers they were already watching" -- this kind of thing.

>"Whoops I forgot to turn my VPN on"

Why would someone be using a VPN if they're using tor for the market? Why would a VPN offer any protection at all? If you're using a VPN and "SSH into one of the servers that they are already watching", then a VPN isn't going to provide anonymity.

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#13

Post by thinkloop »

viraptor wrote: post #8

> A total of at least 320,000 transactions were carried out via the marketplace That's the total from 1-2 years (I can't find when in 2019 did they start). If that's the biggest right now, I'm surprised how small the markets are.

Agree. Maybe there are many small ones now rather than few huge ones. Would be interesting to see total dark market transactions by year.

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#15

Post by Shared404 »

de_nied wrote: post #12
0xy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll never know the real timeline because law enforcement lie about the use of parallel construction to build cases. We know that Tor isn't resistant to state-based attackers, so my money is always on global surveillance networks picking up missteps by the operators. "Whoops I forgot to turn my VPN on and SSH'ed into one of the servers they were already watching" -- this kind of thing.

>"Whoops I forgot to turn my VPN on" Why would someone be using a VPN if they're using tor for the market? Why would a VPN offer any protection at all? If you're using a VPN and "SSH into one of the servers that they are already watching", then a VPN isn't going to provide anonymity.

The model would be something like

    User --> VPN --> Tor --> Market
Assuming the VPN is trustworthy and you don't connect to Tor without it, the VPN would cover up the fact that you used Tor at all.

If you normally use the VPN, but forget it one time, you are now exposed.

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#16

Post by r721 »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #10
thinkloop wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you find out it wasn't the original? I didn't realize bitcoin magazine did that. The quotes in the title should be around "world's largest" only (since they're about the inability to fully know what's happening on the dark web)

From the Bitcoin Magazine article: > “Police in the northern city of Oldenburg ‘were able to arrest the alleged operator of the suspected world’s largest illegal marketplace on the darknet, the DarkMarket, at the weekend,’ prosecutors said in a statement,” according to Barron’s. (with "Barron’s" linking to the Barron's article) I'd call it a stretch to say Barron's is the original source. It's entirely possible Bitco…

Here is the original source (Europol's press release):

https://www.europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/darkmarket-world...

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#17

Post by zakki »

dang wrote: post #3

Url changed from https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/worlds-largest-darknet-... , which points to this. " Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

At the end of Barron's article it is written: The Barron's news department was not involved in the creation of the content above. This story was produced by AFP. For more information go to AFP.com. © Agence France-Presse

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#20

Post by forgingahead »

Scoundreller wrote: post #9
thinkloop wrote: post #2

In theory it is possible to run a bitcoin tor marketplace anonymously, but in practice, given a long enough timeline, mistakes will happen and chances of getting caught approach 100%. I wonder what mistakes were made here.

> given a long enough timeline There's an opportunity. Marketplaces that will exist for X days only.

Unlikely - ever tried to get a gambler on a winning streak to "stop while he's ahead"?
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