Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2: The Fall

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–46 of 46 posts

Re: The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2: The Fall

#41

Post by Lawtonfogle »

forgotpasswd3x wrote: post #36
caseysoftware wrote: post #33

While the "topless girl" is part of the story, was anyone else surprised to see a drawing? When did Wired become NSFW?

I seriously cannot imagine a work environment where it's ok for you to be reading this article sans images, but it wouldn't be ok to be reading this article with the graphics. > When did Wired become NSFW? More like when did caseysoftware decide to work somewhere stupid. I work at a generic corporate america job. I've got a generic corporate america boss, and you know what? He wouldn't get any more upset with me for…

Simple.

Without image: A quick glance and they'll see IT words and won't care.

With image: A quick glance and OMGWTFBBQ FIRED!

At least in the US the standard around nudity/reproduction is extremely immature. I was helping on a health system once and the user having an issue with part of the system recording reproductive health info, they refused to email/attach screenshots of the problem and had to send it physically in a sealed folder like it was some top secret document.

Re: The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2: The Fall

#42

Post by jaryd »

MichaelGG wrote: post #34
jaryd wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why would the LEOs unplug the device? They'd use one of those power transfer gadgets to cutover to battery and keep it running. Same as with desktops and servers. They can just grab him , not necessarily the device.

The idea is that typically people expect a laptop to remain powered when the cord is unplugged (due to the battery), and so in a situation where the laptop is grabbed the power is cut immediately (and unexpectedly) and the hard-drive is no longer decrypted. As another commenter pointed out, a forensics team could then probably grab whatever they needed from the system memory (presuming they acted fast enough), but as I understand it the problem becomes significantly more complicated.

Re: The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2: The Fall

#43

Post by jaryd »

mburns wrote: post #29
jaryd wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If the laptop turned off and the drive was encrypted by what basic method could they extrapolate the same information as if the computer was decrypted and powered on? Are you referring to some kind of memory attack? Wouldn't they need to be prepared to do that kind of forensic work in the extremely near term (or have some equipment on-hand to preserve the memory at least)? I'm pretty uninformed in this area and would appreciate a lesson.

Re: The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2: The Fall

#44

Post by Estragon »

sliverstorm wrote: post #25
fredgrott wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe there's a way to do it with throwaway robots.

Re: The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2: The Fall

#45

Post by ufmace »

fiatmoney wrote: post #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 b…

I thought to come back to this thread and mention this as well because the more I think about it, the more it disturbs me. Why is the high-intensity SWAT raid so embedded in the FBI mindset that it's the first thing they go for, and even well-reasoned internal pressure isn't enough to stop it?

First, I haven't heard of any suspicions that Ross/DPR was in physical possession of any significant quantity of drugs or any weapons at all, or that he had any history of or inclination towards personally committing violence. So what's the point of the 5AM ninja raid? 4 agents in business clothes swinging by at noon would be perfectly adequate to take him into custody without hurting anybody, destroying anything, scaring the crap out of anybody, or scaring anybody into defending themselves with force against what looks an awful lot like criminal action.

Second, the cybercrime team, the guys who actually generated the evidence needed to find him in the first place, told the locals that they were very unlikely to get enough evidence to convict unless they literally snatched his work laptop out of his hands while he was working on Silk Road, without him even having a chance to press a single key. This was based on their experience in previous cybercrime investigations. They were completely ignored, and a SWAT raid was planned anyways, despite this and the first point above.

WTF FBI? Somebody needs to smack some sense into them over there, tell them that they exist to solve crimes and not play wannabe COD mall-ninjas.

Re: The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2: The Fall

#46

Post by mburns »

jaryd wrote: post #43
mburns wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If the laptop turned off and the drive was encrypted by what basic method could they extrapolate the same information as if the computer was decrypted and powered on? Are you referring to some kind of memory attack? Wouldn't they need to be prepared to do that kind of forensic work in the extremely near term (or have some equipment on-hand to preserve the memory at least)? I'm pretty uninformed in this area and would…

You wouldn't turn off the device, particularly if you thought that turning it off could make you lose access to information.

That can be achieved by (1) transferring the machine to a portable battery unit without interrupting the power feed from the AC wall adapter and/or (2) imaging the machine's memory and mounted drives in-place.

These are things the FBI has in its toolbox, precisely because "yank the power cable" is how many criminals rely on protecting their otherwise encrypted data.

Post reply on HN