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Silk Road 2.0 Launches

forbes.com

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Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches

#71

Post by mtinkerhess »

JackFr wrote: post #61
andrewljohnson wrote: post #3

I'd never buy heroin from a website, but I see the Silk Road as cyber-civil-disobedience, and I hope the persona of DPR and the site itself are as unsinkable as they claim. The drug war is a ghastly thing, and the number of people we lock up in the US is more shameful than our foreign policy. You can begrudge the first DPR his lame security, shady murder contracts, and ill-gotten fortune, but he's the product of our…

> You can begrudge the first DPR his lame security, shady murder contracts, and ill-gotten fortune, but he's the product of our system, and his shame is our shame. That is probably the dumbest thing I've read in months.

I agree that andrewljohnson's statement is debatable but I think it's also defensible. I'm envious of the quality of your reading material if you haven't read anything dumber in months.

Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches

#73

Post by girvo »

tsigo wrote: post #56
girvo wrote: post #7

The sudden rise of terribly programmed, horribly insecure marketplaces as hidden services since SR went down has been absolutely fascinating.

Any particular reason you're assuming this one is terribly programmed and horribly insecure? Other than past experience, I guess.

The litany of hidden service marketplace failures in the past month alone is enough to make me have little faith in this endeavour. I'm just glad im watching on as am outsider: quite a few people in desperate situations are losing lots of money.

Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches

#74

Post by ye »

jarrett wrote: post #53
computer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With good opsec (i.e. only PGP-encrypted messages) sellers should still be able to operate safely. Buyers slightly less, considering that the sellers might be cops (which is also the case on a non-honeypot site), or because the PGP-keys of the sellers might be fake (for MITM). But considering that feds generally seem to target sellers, I don't think the usefulness of this as a honeypot would be huge. But it's definit…

> considering that the sellers might be cops Why wouldn't law enforcement pose as buyers, as well? This is a common tactic in narcotics enforcement. Entrapment often isn't an issue, as the seller took the first step of advertising the drugs for sale. Are you getting at the fact that the buyer must have a receiving address, while the seller can ship anonymously? I would be skeptical of that. If I were attempting to tr…

> Why wouldn't law enforcement pose as buyers, as well?

Because as a buyer you don't know who the seller is. You just receive your package.

But as a seller, you know your buyer's mailing address. It becomes trivial to catch the buyer.

Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches

#75

Post by iskander »

knodi wrote: post #23
ihsw wrote: post #6

I have a sneaking suspicion that it's a honeypot. Just a hunch.

Easy way to find out buy something cheap and ship it to your neighbor. Your neighbor will have a bad day but won't won't get in trouble and there won't be any evidence that he bought it only that someone shipped it to him/her.

>Your neighbor will have a bad day but won't won't get in trouble

This may result in your neighbor being raided and possibly being injured (and small chance they might be killed). Please read the description of some of these botched raids http://www.cato.org/raidmap before you willfully endanger people you should be looking out for.

Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches

#77

Post by malandrew »

hack_edu wrote: post #64

Never, ever, ever trust anyone or anything that suddenly reappears after a major bust by the authorities. NEVER . Move on.

One would think that they'd start moving to technologies that are decentralized using technologies such as distributed hash tables. This puts the onus on the users to have a client app that helps host the transaction system for everyone else.

The clients would openly share the buy and sell orders and then communication would moved to an encrypted channel that supports perfect forward secrecy.

The only part that ostensibly needs to be centralized is a ledger maintaining the reputation tied to some pseudonym.

i.e. the identity of DPR is passed along to all the users of the site collectively.

Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches

#78

Post by nickles »

jarrett wrote: post #53
computer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With good opsec (i.e. only PGP-encrypted messages) sellers should still be able to operate safely. Buyers slightly less, considering that the sellers might be cops (which is also the case on a non-honeypot site), or because the PGP-keys of the sellers might be fake (for MITM). But considering that feds generally seem to target sellers, I don't think the usefulness of this as a honeypot would be huge. But it's definit…

> considering that the sellers might be cops Why wouldn't law enforcement pose as buyers, as well? This is a common tactic in narcotics enforcement. Entrapment often isn't an issue, as the seller took the first step of advertising the drugs for sale. Are you getting at the fact that the buyer must have a receiving address, while the seller can ship anonymously? I would be skeptical of that. If I were attempting to tr…

This is what made Kaczynski (the Unabomber) so difficult to track. IIRC, he would travel for a few hours (by bus) to a town and deposit his packages in a mailbox there [citation needed]. This made it difficult to track him, since the origin of the package didn't leak any information about the sender.

For sellers, proper OPSec requires that they do not leave fingerprints in/on the package, that mailing locations are reasonably random and not isolated to a small geographic area, and that the sender masks his identity (veiled face, no cellphone, no car) when dropping off the packages. Additionally, a seller should use a variety of packaging types for shipments to make detecting the illicit shipments harder.

Given these precautions, it would likely be infeasible for law enforcement agencies to identify a given seller. However, they would also reduce profits for the vendor.

Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches

#79

Post by subpixel »

joshontheweb wrote: post #65
subpixel wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the Silk Roads of the world making much difference with regard to the drug war. Right now Silk Road is the eBay of drugs, where convenience is it's competitive advantage. I can get some drug without visiting a shady person in some shady place, but the drugs (in general) are still coming to the US the bloody, violent way via paramilitaries, druglords, etc. A huge part of the US war on drugs takes place amo…

| but the drugs (in general) are still coming to the US th bloody, violent way via paramilitaries, druglords, etc. Not necessarily. A lot of them appear to be shipped in via post from outside the US direct to the buyer.

I was trying to point out that the drug war doesn't begin or end at the border.

Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches

#80

Post by ye »

knodi wrote: post #23
ihsw wrote: post #6

I have a sneaking suspicion that it's a honeypot. Just a hunch.

Easy way to find out buy something cheap and ship it to your neighbor. Your neighbor will have a bad day but won't won't get in trouble and there won't be any evidence that he bought it only that someone shipped it to him/her.

I'm alright with people buying and selling drugs, as long as they risk their own lives.

But that is just low. What kind of psychopath do you have to be to ruin some innocent persons's life just because you want to check some theory.

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