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Operator of Silk Road 2.0 Website Charged in Manhattan Federal Court

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Re: Operator of Silk Road 2.0 Website Charged in Manhattan Federal Court

#191

Post by mpyne »

chatmasta wrote: post #64
crazypyro wrote: post #2

I think this is the money quote: "During the Government’s investigation, which was conducted jointly by the FBI and HSI, an HSI agent acting in an undercover capacity (the “HSI-UC”) successfully infiltrated the support staff involved in the administration of the Silk Road 2.0 website, and was given access to private, restricted areas of the site reserved for BENTHALL and his administrative staff. By doing so, the HSI…

This sounds no different than the undercover police, detective work the FBI has been doing since its establishment. Infiltrate the perp, take him down. They used the same tactics on gangs, mobs, etc. Now violent crime is slowing, but they have hoardes of agents trained in these protocols, so they're redirecting energy into catching so called "cybercriminals." A bunch of people who infiltrated the mob are now infitrat…

> By the way: If the FBI is so successful using traditional police tactics to infiltrate "cybercrime syndicates," why do they need a "front door" to our devices?

Just like the old-fashioned police work they did here which you mentioned, the FBI in the past has been able to use warrants to obtain unilateral access to safe deposit boxes, drill open personal safes stored at home, search through a person's desks, closets, bedrooms, etc. for particular items, and more.

That is the level of access FBI Director Comey is saying that they need (the ability to enforce warrants for the same types of searches required for "papers and effects") for the same reasons that the FBI has needed such access for investigations in the past.

He isn't asking for the ability to conduct passive or mass surveillance, or even the ability for FBI to unilaterally enforce a warrant. He's asking for the ability of the device manufacturer themselves to be able to comply with a warrant if one is offered up. The cryptographic technology necessary to do so already exists, in a way that would limit access to the manufacturer, so that's not the issue.

Re: Operator of Silk Road 2.0 Website Charged in Manhattan Federal Court

#192

Post by mpyne »

ZeroFries wrote: post #111
tedunangst wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WANTED: rockstar programmer for new e-commerce startup. still in stealth mode, but think silk road with less php and more rails. bitcoin experience/enthusiasm a plus. message for details. no feds please.

Better watch out, law enforcement isn't exactly known for their sense of humour.

Perhaps, but that kind of joke gets made all the time on the Internet without bringing down black helicopters.

Re: Operator of Silk Road 2.0 Website Charged in Manhattan Federal Court

#193

Post by mpyne »

disposition2 wrote: post #126
Touche wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically which laws did the FBI break in this investigation?

I'm not sure if they did, "in this investigation". I was commenting more on the general tone of US agencies, since the PATRIOT ACT, and their contradictions of what is breaking the law when it applies to them vs. whomever they are investigating.

Commenting more on the general tone of US agencies, since changing the law to specifically allow an expanded set of investigatory techniques, is them "breaking the law"? What?

You can argue they shouldn't have such authorities, but when the law explicitly gives them authority it's foolish to then claim they're breaking the law when using those same authorities.

Re: Operator of Silk Road 2.0 Website Charged in Manhattan Federal Court

#194

Post by zanny »

yourad_io wrote: post #183
feld wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not log bugging your bootloader can magically send your password for the key off the server. They would have to be watching and be very quick, but I'm sure they'd want to see the server start to boot to ensure they have it. I'd compare the bootloader to a known good image as an early boot step and if it isn't what you expect immediately start destroying data. :-)

I meant "power outage" as the pretext that would justify (to the HS owner) why the server has been power-cycled (assuming they decided to cooperate with the FBI/whoever). Here's how I would do it: - I assume that your hard drives are in RAID. I gamble that they're in RAID 1 - most typical - and strip one out while the server is still running. Some kernel messages are logged, whatever. - I start imaging the disk. If i…

> I patch both your boot loader and your kernel with a rootkit. This should be laughably easy for the level of adversary we're talking about.

Well, you won't be getting the kernel, its on the drives. It would have to be in a separate partition so you can start it before mounting the sensitive filesystems, and you may have a key that the bootloader uses on it, but in either case if you are not present and a sever goes offline you basically have to do the following:

Verify the ROMs integrity in that first stage - before you put in the key for your actually sensitive data. That means you need open firmware or some mechanism to hash the ROM that is installed, you need to have a means to read it in its entirety, and then you need to hash it.

I say open firmware because you need to be able to guarantee the FBI couldn't embed a backdoor firmware. If you can get open spec / openfirmware mainboards and verify their authenticity only then can you be safe.

Then you verify the kernel, which is much easier because you can compile it yourself, maybe even pad it with some random and scramble the ELF tables in some custom orientation.

And then you need to worry about how you input the key - if its by USB, you can backdoor the USB and network controllers and keylog in hardware depending on the vendor and model of the mainboard. Over the network, just the NIC is in question, because any secret sharing over ethernet better be over a secure connection.

But that should be it. It is a fine line at best, and a bottomless pit at worse, but there are ways to try to be hardware secure.

Re: Operator of Silk Road 2.0 Website Charged in Manhattan Federal Court

#195

Post by the_ancient »

danielki wrote: post #128
kazazes wrote: post #17

I won't link to them directly, but his accounts on most social networks are not deactivated, are publicly viewable and all mention bitcoin in the bio. In the wake of DPR 1.0 I find this a bit hubristic.

That's not the worst of it - the criminal complaint mentions that the server was registered to the email address blake@benthall.net. If that's not a giant "hey, feds, come and get me", I don't know what is. It also mentions that most of the accounts (Bitcoin wallet and other) that he used were all under his real name.

yes and none of that can be faked at all....

People have never signed up for services with the wrong email address, I have never gotten confirmation emails for things I did not sign up for... no no that has never happened...

/s

Re: Operator of Silk Road 2.0 Website Charged in Manhattan Federal Court

#197

Post by mpyne »

yourad_io wrote: post #65

I cannot imagine a way in which a single-server hidden service is safe from a global, active adversary like FBI, NSA & Friends. This [1] discusses passive analysis over time. Isn't it really easy to locate one if you can perform active attacks on the global infrastructure? (introduce latencies and/or break links temporarily) If your hidden service is served by a couple of mirrors on each continent, though... then may…

> Isn't it really easy to locate one if you can perform active attacks on the global infrastructure? (introduce latencies and/or break links temporarily)

Seems like it wouldn't even take too long if you apply the same type of logic that makes binary search O(log n), even with mirrored servers. And as long as you don't need perfection (i.e. just to narrow to a list of candidates for further inspection) then mixing that with Bayesian statistics would probably work wonders too.

Re: Operator of Silk Road 2.0 Website Charged in Manhattan Federal Court

#198

Post by mpyne »

Estragon wrote: post #54

Why couldn't the FBI land this case by itself? What are the responsibilities and special investigative powers (if any) of "Homeland Security Investigations." How do they justify their existence independent of the FBI? Their webpage suggests they do almost exactly the same thing. http://www.ice.gov/hsi

ICE is the agency that handles customs inspections, and presumably get called in for any type of smuggling of contraband that crosses national borders.

It would make a lot of sense for the Federal government to have a single agency that investigates all computer-related crimes, but since that would make sense it will never happen. Instead each agency (FBI, US Secret Service, ICE, etc.) will investigate computer-related crimes that tie into their bailiwick, likely cooperating for cases that cross jurisdictional boundaries like this case did.

Re: Operator of Silk Road 2.0 Website Charged in Manhattan Federal Court

#199

Post by mpyne »

Caligula wrote: post #180

I think this may be his hn account. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=blakeeb

"Greed. It's terrifying how much it prevails in our startup culture."

Good to know he managed to tone down that concern in time for him to drop cold hard cash on a Tesla once the dough from SR2 started rolling in.

Re: Operator of Silk Road 2.0 Website Charged in Manhattan Federal Court

#200

Post by mpyne »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #110
Estragon wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Conspiracy has been defined in the United States as an agreement of two or more people to commit a crime, or to accomplish a legal end through illegal actions." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(criminal)#United_St... Thus it's conspiracy if you are party to an agreement which involves you receiving a bitcoin commission (legal end) as a result of the trafficking of drugs (illegal action.) If they're charging…

What if you don't take a cut of the transaction? If there's some flat fee that people pay regardless of whether there is an illegal drug transaction, is that then a conspiracy?

Perhaps not, but if you know (or reasonably should know) that a crime is being committed and then don't report it, now you're an accomplice to the crime.

It's hard to miss all the ads for drugs on SR2.0, so it would be very easy to prove that charge at the very least. And as we've seen in the past, Federal prosecutors tend to be very inventive, and the law tends to be rather expansive for these types of things, it wouldn't surprise me at all if there are other charges that would be possible.

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