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Global Web Crackdown Arrests 17, Seizes Hundreds Of Dark Net Domains

wired.com

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Re: Global Web Crackdown Arrests 17, Seizes Hundreds Of Dark Net Domains

#111

Post by lotharbot »

charonn0 wrote: post #99
rglover wrote: post #20

“This is something we want to keep for ourselves,” he said. “The way we do this, we can’t share with the whole world, because we want to do it again and again and again.” That is so freaking evil.

That confuses me. How can they prove that the people they arrested are actually connected to these sites if they won't show how they came to that conclusion?

They might have 10x or 100x the evidence they actually need. So they provide the least compromising to their own operation. They don't need to show the courts exactly what vulnerabilities they've targeted if the courts are willing to accept "they got the guy's confession on tape" (and they didn't somehow screw that up to make it inadmissible.)

Re: Global Web Crackdown Arrests 17, Seizes Hundreds Of Dark Net Domains

#112

Post by lotharbot »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #102

Commenting to save this post. Downvote away.

Any post you upvote is saved in your "saved stories" link (https://news.ycombinator.com/saved?id=[your id] -- you can find it in your profile. No, it won't display other peoples' saved stories for you.)

If you must comment, try to at least include something other people will want to read. (And then you can stick a keyword like "saved" or "fleezblort" into your post to make it easy for you to search for.)

Re: Global Web Crackdown Arrests 17, Seizes Hundreds Of Dark Net Domains

#113

Post by chrissnell »

downandout wrote: post #17

Lessons learned: 1) Don't engage in businesses that make you a target of the world's best-funded law enforcement agencies. 2) If ignoring lesson 1, don't access servers directly, from home, and don't pay for said servers with personal credit card. 3) Don't pay for your $130K Tesla using BTC a month after you open up a massive illegal drug marketplace that runs exclusively on BTC. Someone may suspect something. 4) Whe…

You're spot on with the Tesla comment. How does the government bust every big drug trafficker, mafioso, or fraudster? Answer: tax evasion. It might be hard to prove in court that this kid was behind SR2 but it's easy to prove that he pulled $70K out of thin air for a Tesla and never paid taxes on that income. Easy federal prison sentence.

Re: Global Web Crackdown Arrests 17, Seizes Hundreds Of Dark Net Domains

#114

Post by xorcist »

EStudley wrote: post #21
kissickas wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sincerely hope this was done not through Tor backdoors but through traditional police techniques. It would be a great piece of evidence in support of anonymity if they were able to do all of this without finding/creating exploits. Hopefully we'll eventually know the truth.

I've heard reports that Feds were actually moderators of SR2 from the very start. So from the beginning they were actively building a case against the other owners.

If your job is to catch drug dealers on the Internet, I would expect you to be undercover on all these sites.

You could either hire lots and lots of cryptographers and hope for a theoretical breakthrough, or you could hire police officers and let them work undercover.

It's the reasonable thing to do.

Re: Global Web Crackdown Arrests 17, Seizes Hundreds Of Dark Net Domains

#115

Post by xorcist »

lotsofmangos wrote: post #68
Renaud wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here's how the attack may have happened: Step one, collect data about which computers are sending and receiving large amounts of Tor bandwidth. Step two, if the server resides in a datacenter, request an image of the server. Step three, you now know whether the server is a darknet website. This in itself is not sufficient: there are thousand of Tor bridges, relays and exit points. All of them carry lots of traffic…

neither Europol nor the FBI can just walk into any data center and request images of any server that handles Tor traffic without a warrant, which would require some tangible evidence to support its release What about with a data request by a judge in Italy, raising a sealed subpoena through a Texas court to get the FBI to physically remove a server from a datacenter in London belonging to a UK organisation, without i…

As long as everyone has someone else to point to who is responsible, these things will continue to happen. It's the same pretty much everywhere in the world.

Re: Global Web Crackdown Arrests 17, Seizes Hundreds Of Dark Net Domains

#116

Post by xorcist »

gumber wrote: post #16
bhouston wrote: post #5

I think that TOR should no longer be considered secure in the wake of so many busts. Either it isn't secure by some flaw, or it is too easy to fingerprint visitors, or some other work around.

I refuse to believe that the FBI is privy to a funamental TOR break that's completely eluded the cryptographic community, and they're risking revealing it with some darknet busts. If TOR was broken, they'd be encouraging its use while secretly mining it for parallel construction opportunities across the board. Instead, we get warning shots. TOR is fine, but now that we know that the FBI has its tendrils everywhere pe…

Couldn't you at least narrow it down to the AS by correlating outages, if you're watching it for an extended period of time?

The rest should be possible with more standard police work, once you know where to look (there are probably not more nodes in an AS that you could check them all, disregard known relays etc.).

Re: Global Web Crackdown Arrests 17, Seizes Hundreds Of Dark Net Domains

#117

Post by hellbanner »

devconsole wrote: post #32
bhouston wrote: post #5

I think that TOR should no longer be considered secure in the wake of so many busts. Either it isn't secure by some flaw, or it is too easy to fingerprint visitors, or some other work around.

There are some interesting theories being tossed around. I'd like to add one more. The common thread across all darknet websites is the fact that they generally run from datacenters. Most people don't host websites from their residence. Further, most people don't colocate servers anymore. I would be surprised if any of the 414 websites operated on boxes that had been colocated. However I won't rule out that colocatin…

What kinds of discussions, exactly, get autokilled on Reddit?

Re: Global Web Crackdown Arrests 17, Seizes Hundreds Of Dark Net Domains

#118

Post by krapp »

marianminds wrote: post #29
krapp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a high profile tech magazine with mainstream credibility. It would be silly for them not to have FBI sources.

Some guy in a fedora and freebsd t-shirt hanging around sleazy bars downtown waiting for his flipped FBI agent to come around and drop him some new juicy goss on the latest... TF2 hat update? Sounds legit

Well, Wired is a business, and cybercrime stories are pretty good business, and a lot of people the FBI might want to reach (and let know that they're on to your games, criminal scum) probably read Wired. It would be a mutually beneficial relationship, and this isn't exactly bad press for the government, so it might be more legit than it sounds at first glance.

Re: Global Web Crackdown Arrests 17, Seizes Hundreds Of Dark Net Domains

#119

Post by krapp »

higherpurpose wrote: post #80
krapp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a high profile tech magazine with mainstream credibility. It would be silly for them not to have FBI sources.

It just doesn't seem right for media sites to "partner" with FBI/the government for a story like this, and give them a platform to spread its propaganda. For the record I'm one of the people who believe what the FBI did here is wrong . I imagine if they had know what it is and what it can do early on, they would've shut down Bittorrent Inc, too, for "facilitating piracy", "conspiracy to create piracy", "money launder…

This isn't entirely propaganda, though. Sure, the government's version of events is, but it's also a newsworthy event that Wired's readership would be interested in. Why would they not cover it, or foster partnerships that make it easier to get access to stories like this? It is literally their job.

Re: Global Web Crackdown Arrests 17, Seizes Hundreds Of Dark Net Domains

#120

Post by devconsole »

hellbanner wrote: post #117
devconsole wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some interesting theories being tossed around. I'd like to add one more. The common thread across all darknet websites is the fact that they generally run from datacenters. Most people don't host websites from their residence. Further, most people don't colocate servers anymore. I would be surprised if any of the 414 websites operated on boxes that had been colocated. However I won't rule out that colocatin…

What kinds of discussions, exactly, get autokilled on Reddit?

I just tested it. It looks like I was incorrect. People told me that Reddit shadowbans you if you create a new account using Tor. Maybe that was the case for awhile, or maybe it's true for a certain subreddit, but it doesn't seem to be true anymore. Thank you for fact checking me.
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