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

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

#61

Post by Dma54rhs »

skinkestek wrote: post #33
seibelj wrote: post #23

No matter what anyone says, I believe with every fiber of my being that simple drug dealing is a victimless crime. Free people choose to purchase and consume drugs to their own detriment (benefit). All violence related to the sale of drugs is ancillary to the fact some drugs (but not others - alcohol, marijuana, caffeine for starters) are illegal. https://freeross.org/

> I believe with every fiber of my being that simple drug dealing is a victimless crime. Quick, ugly counterexample: Date rape drugs. You can of course say that the crime is on whoever uses it but criminal neglect is a thing. Somewhat more nuanced example: Vulnerable people are still given highly addictive drugs as "marketing" from dealers. This isn't something all of those victims have chosen, so I'd say it isn't vi…

GHB what most consider a date rape drug is also used widely by people on themselves as a... Drug like any other. Probably alcohol is the most common 'rape drug' out there.

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

#62

Post by lightgreen »

estaseuropano wrote: post #39
seibelj wrote: post #23

No matter what anyone says, I believe with every fiber of my being that simple drug dealing is a victimless crime. Free people choose to purchase and consume drugs to their own detriment (benefit). All violence related to the sale of drugs is ancillary to the fact some drugs (but not others - alcohol, marijuana, caffeine for starters) are illegal. https://freeross.org/

Without getting into detailed arguments have a look into the opium wars (basically the UK forcing China to keep accepting opium imports) and the effects opium had on Chinese society. Super interesting and a case in point about how drugs - much less addictive compared to modern standards - when used at scale and widely available can destroy the fabric of society. There is no country where drugs are legal, just some wh…

Even if some drug is addictive and dangerous, it does not need to be banned.

Society should treat citizens as responsible adults, not as children in kindergarten requiring constant care.

Yes, some people will fail to fight with addiction, unfortunately.

I believe, eventually all drugs need to be legalized. But not all at once. It should be done very slowly.

There are legitimate cases even for addictive recreational drugs. I think of this. Suppose I'm told I'm dying of cancer in 6 months. I could take painkillers for these 6 months and dying of boredom. But instead I'd prefer to stick to cocaine and have a lot of fun.

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

#64

Post by bauruine »

Shared404 wrote: post #40
bauruine wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are able to do a deanonymization attack on the 3 hop Tor circuit why should a VPN protect you? They can just mount a similar attack on the one hop VPN.

Thus the requirement for the VPN to be trustworthy. What that means changes on the threat model, but for this scenario we'll say a hypothetical VPN provider in a different jurisdiction that takes Monero and has good OpSec. The reason they can do the deanonymization attack on the Tor circuit is that they have basically unlimited resources to set up nodes, and Tor is built on the assumption that the nodes are all unrel…

The common misconception is that you have to run the nodes to do a traffic correlation attack. It's enough to see the traffic of the nodes e.g. on a IXP or as the ISP. [0] Even if the VPN is trustworthy and adversary that is able to break Tor could most likely still sees the traffic and can do a similar attack like he did for Tor.

I'm not saying that this happened only that if you think that there is a global adversary that can break the Tor anonymity a VPN won't protect you.

[0] https://www.ohmygodel.com/publications/usersrouted-ccs13.pdf

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

#65

Post by bigiain »

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.

aka "exit scam"

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

#66

Post by justinclift »

malwarebytess wrote: post #24
alasdair_ wrote: post #22

The article mentions the us irs were involved. For a german marketplace run by an Australian. Any idea why?

An idea: much of the time the way dark net vendors are taken down involve the IRS. Did you know that you can legally report illicit income, legally, with ostensibly no negative consequence? >Income from illegal activities, such as money from dealing illegal drugs, must be included in your income on Schedule 1 (Form 1040), line 8, or on Schedule C (Form 1040) if from your self-employment activity. https://www.irs.gov/…

Be that as it may, the "parallel construction" thing by various agencies make it a hairy prospect.

eg "legally" report stuff there, and strangely enough anonymous tips to your local LEO officer would probably happen. ;)

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

#67

Post by adenozine »

As more of the "largest darknet marketplace"s are taken down, it kinda becomes less and less impressive whenever some law enforcement agency does it.

This one seems to have decent volume by BTC and other crypto, but it's not really anything earth-shattering.

In the scheme of things, I don't see there being any major ground made in preventing people from selling dope online. It's nearly trivial to ship it anonymously and it's nearly trivial to package it and sanitize it and aside from taking the time to scan and inspect every single piece of mail, people are going to continue to want to buy drugs online.

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

#68

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

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.

Exit scams are also a problem whose likelihood increases with time. Either the fed's bust in and take the user's money, or the market makers take off with the user's money, or both sides wait for the pot to get bigger.

It kinda seems like fees and taxes, but instead of paying them on every transaction the users gamble on whether they'll be the one stuck with the bill.

I'm also interested in the particular opsec failure for this iteration, I just think don't think it's the only factor.

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

#69

Post by [deleted] »

Shared404 wrote: post #40
bauruine wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are able to do a deanonymization attack on the 3 hop Tor circuit why should a VPN protect you? They can just mount a similar attack on the one hop VPN.

Thus the requirement for the VPN to be trustworthy. What that means changes on the threat model, but for this scenario we'll say a hypothetical VPN provider in a different jurisdiction that takes Monero and has good OpSec. The reason they can do the deanonymization attack on the Tor circuit is that they have basically unlimited resources to set up nodes, and Tor is built on the assumption that the nodes are all unrel…

[deleted]

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

#70

Post by martin_a »

"the largest market" always reminds me of "Bin Ladens right hand". Obviously the next one becomes the largest, but nevertheless it's like they kill at least one of those markets a month.

Probably legalizing weed would stop most of that more effectively than all those police operations after month of preparation.

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