Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cirrus?
Cyrus was the name of the traitor in The Matrix. Coincidence... ... Surely.
who the hell plugged him in when he went to meet the agent? i feel that is a huge plot hole in the movie
The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2: The Fall
21–30 of 46 posts
Re: The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2: The Fall
#22"the local FBI wanted to mount a dramatic raid on Ross’ house. Tarbell ... was worried about repeating the mistake made during his first big cybercrime case ... a SWAT team charged into Hammond’s apartment throwing flash grenades, immediately alerting Hammond in the back room, who shut the lid of his laptop, encrypting it forever... Still, the assault strategy remained in place."
So take note - the FBI is populated by the kind of people who enjoy roughing up suspects, even when it harms a larger investigation.
Re: The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2: The Fall
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Calling him stupid seems to kinda miss the point to me. I think it's more that when you're up against the Feds, especially on something so deeply entrenched as being illegal worldwide as distributing drugs on a massive scale, you're going to get caught eventually, because it only takes one mistake. Sure, he was kinda dumb and made a lot more than one mistake, but how much better could anybody here do? Enough to keep…
> but how much better could anybody here do? Well, Kim Dotcom is still kicking it. As for Ross, the evidence might have been circumstantial at best if his un-encrypted notebook wasn't grabbed.
What always gets me is how (in this situation) he would ever operate a laptop that was usable without being plugged in... If he had simply removed the battery and kept the thing plugged then the laptop would have powered off immediately after it was grabbed.
Re: The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2: The Fall
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Calling him stupid seems to kinda miss the point to me. I think it's more that when you're up against the Feds, especially on something so deeply entrenched as being illegal worldwide as distributing drugs on a massive scale, you're going to get caught eventually, because it only takes one mistake. Sure, he was kinda dumb and made a lot more than one mistake, but how much better could anybody here do? Enough to keep…
I think the main thing is I would have sold it wholesale for Bitcoin as soon as it was stable and profitable enough that I could make $10 million USD. He hit that point pretty early on. The again, I wouldn't start an illegal business intentionally...so there is that.
If gamblers are any indication, what happens when you hit $10M is you start to think about what $100M would be like...
Re: The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2: The Fall
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's pretty amazing how the use of Tor drives this kind of wishful ignorance. You see it all the time on /r/darknetmarkets
Notice that even the two agents caught stealing from Ross thought tor as secure Also notice that most criminals are dumb and send their drug shipments through regular mail or air mail..very stupid..and also notice that those shipments tipped off LE.. Take-way anonymous is only secure at its weakest link..the weakest link here was the physical drug shipments..that will never be secure..ever
the weakest link here was the physical drug shipments..that will never be secure..ever
Well, it can be if you develop your own underground distribution networks, but then you aren't a darknet message board, you're the mafia.
Re: The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2: The Fall
#26"the local FBI wanted to mount a dramatic raid on Ross’ house. Tarbell ... was worried about repeating the mistake made during his first big cybercrime case ... a SWAT team charged into Hammond’s apartment throwing flash grenades, immediately alerting Hammond in the back room, who shut the lid of his laptop, encrypting it forever... Still, the assault strategy remained in place." So take note - the FBI is populated b…
Sounds more like the old adage about how when you're holding a hammer-
Re: The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2: The Fall
#27"the local FBI wanted to mount a dramatic raid on Ross’ house. Tarbell ... was worried about repeating the mistake made during his first big cybercrime case ... a SWAT team charged into Hammond’s apartment throwing flash grenades, immediately alerting Hammond in the back room, who shut the lid of his laptop, encrypting it forever... Still, the assault strategy remained in place." So take note - the FBI is populated b…
There were a whole bunch of articles a while ago about the rise of using SWAT teams for all sorts of arrests. Think from the officers' perspectives - they watch all these movies, they go and become FBI officers, and then they barely get to do anything exciting. So they naturally jump at the chance to do an exciting arrest. I guess there should be some kind of check-and-balance in place on the type of arrest, maybe for some arrests they should need to get a special warrant or something.
Re: The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2: The Fall
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the main thing is I would have sold it wholesale for Bitcoin as soon as it was stable and profitable enough that I could make $10 million USD. He hit that point pretty early on. The again, I wouldn't start an illegal business intentionally...so there is that.
If gamblers are any indication, what happens when you hit $10M is you start to think about what $100M would be like...
Or if people are any indication..
(though the economy depends on that)
Re: The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2: The Fall
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but how much better could anybody here do? Well, Kim Dotcom is still kicking it. As for Ross, the evidence might have been circumstantial at best if his un-encrypted notebook wasn't grabbed.
What always gets me is how (in this situation) he would ever operate a laptop that was usable without being plugged in... If he had simply removed the battery and kept the thing plugged then the laptop would have powered off immediately after it was grabbed.
That would have been an improvement, but even basic computer forensic gathering knowledge would get around this without trouble. What he needed to do is keep his sensitive files encrypted separately from his laptop login. Like on a USB drive encrypted with GPG and a nice long passphrase.
Even then, the FBI grabbed him with his laptop logged into the management interface for Silk Road... So he still would have been in some hot water.
Re: The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2: The Fall
#30tl;dr: Ross was a colossal idiot who ignored warnings about the shoddy state of his opsec. I hate to say it, because Ross and I have a few mutual friends, but the guy was an idiot, and it's looking more and more like he deserved what he got for being so utterly stupid .
So yes, in retrospect he made some very basic errors. That said, it's pretty easy to call someone stupid after reading a long-form piece informed by a full indictment of their crimes produced by an intergovernmental criminal investigation and subsequent trial.
I have no experience in the matter, but I imagine that being the kingpin of such an organization tends to pull one's head in so many directions that it's easy for smart people to do dumb things unknowingly.