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A dark web tycoon pleads guilty, but how was he caught?

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Re: A dark web tycoon pleads guilty, but how was he caught?

#61

Post by ChrisCinelli »

ChrisCinelli wrote: post #58
pier25 wrote: post #3

OTOH if these techniques and vulnerabilities were made public it would benefit cybercriminals as they could defend themselves better.

I was going to write that the world is moving toward hiding some technologies from the public domain and facts are also hidden. And that requires a very high trust in those that manage these secrets. In reality I realized that this has always been the case in the last 100 years.

This realization come to new questions.

In some regards, we are beyond democracy since the voters do not know what is going on and to be fair even if they knew it, most of them will be unable to know what it means.

If the system is hidden who is making sure that who control remain in the good side?

Is something changing inside the system?

Who is going to make sure the system stay on the good side?

Now Star Wars plot comes to mind...

Re: A dark web tycoon pleads guilty, but how was he caught?

#62

Post by emayljames »

justaj wrote: post #54
agoristen wrote: post #26

This report came out only a few months before he was caught: https://www.reddit.com/r/onions/comments/1guiav/we_have_anal... He was likely de-anonymized through this technique or similar. The issue was that he trusted the Tor network to keep him anonymous and paid for the servers with his real identity.

Just to be clear: The v3 onion services fix that weakness, right?

I am merely give my opinion, but a service created by the US government/Military is going to have undocumented "issues". I would not trust it one shred.

Re: A dark web tycoon pleads guilty, but how was he caught?

#63

Post by bufferoverflow »

ohmygodel wrote: post #46

Running a hosting server for onion services, as was done in this case, is a terrible idea. It greatly increases the risk of deanonymization. The question is less how this hosting service was discovered and more how it ever stayed up long enough to become so notorious. Here's why: 1. Each hidden service chooses a "guard" relay to serve as the first hop for all connections. 2. A server running multiple hidden services…

That only leads you to the server though, not to the person managing it.

Re: A dark web tycoon pleads guilty, but how was he caught?

#64

Post by vilhelm_s »

searcher1 wrote: post #42

If you're wondering why a web host, who could potentially be immune to prosecution under CDA 230, was charged with the distribution of child pornography, according to the warrant [1] an admin of one of the pedo sites claimed that Freedom Hosting had "full control" over the websites (well, he had root access to the servers, but so did OVH), was patching the websites, that the pedo site hosting was free, and that he as…

CDA 230 immunity doesn't apply to federal crimes, only to civil lawsuits and state crimes. This was prosecuted under federal laws against child pornography, so it would not help them anyway.

Re: A dark web tycoon pleads guilty, but how was he caught?

#65

Post by homonculus1 »

ChrisCinelli wrote: post #39
zelly wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> drive to a Starbucks Didn't help Ross. It's a bad idea to do illegal stuff in public.

It is a bad idea to do illegal stuff.

Depends on your value system. Another perspective is that some laws ought to be broken, in spite of the potential consequences.

Re: A dark web tycoon pleads guilty, but how was he caught?

#66

Post by bufferoverflow »

emayljames wrote: post #62
justaj wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear: The v3 onion services fix that weakness, right?

I am merely give my opinion, but a service created by the US government/Military is going to have undocumented "issues". I would not trust it one shred.

Tor is open source:

https://www.torproject.org/download/tor/

So, no undocumented issues.

Re: A dark web tycoon pleads guilty, but how was he caught?

#67

Post by not2b »

HideousKojima wrote: post #22
zelly wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> drive to a Starbucks Didn't help Ross. It's a bad idea to do illegal stuff in public.

Ross was dumb enough to get fake passports/ids shipped directly to his home address

He made lots of stupid mistakes.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/03/five-stup...

Re: A dark web tycoon pleads guilty, but how was he caught?

#68

Post by noident »

hooch wrote: post #60
searcher1 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article explicitly does mention "EgotisticalGiraffe" (the Firefox TBB exploit). But the point is that the exploit was dropped on all websites that Freedom Hosting was running, which raises the question that the article is really about, "how did they know where the hidden services were?"

Could they not purchase some “Freedom hosting” and upload a website with backdoor?

This seems like the easiest way to do it, so I would speculate that this is how it was done. All you have to do is put a website up and make the server phone home, revealing the hidden IP address. Some more speculation: the government is hiding this fact in order to deter criminal use of Tor.

Of course, I would still assume that other ways of discovering the location of hidden services have been found. I'm not convinced that onions can be hidden from an adversary with the resources of a US government agency, particularly in light of some of the posts that appeared on Hacker Factor recently.

Re: A dark web tycoon pleads guilty, but how was he caught?

#69

Post by edm0nd »

HideousKojima wrote: post #22
zelly wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> drive to a Starbucks Didn't help Ross. It's a bad idea to do illegal stuff in public.

Ross was dumb enough to get fake passports/ids shipped directly to his home address

While Ross did do some bad things, I do not think it is enough to warrant a double life sentence plus forty years without the possibility of parole.

El Chapo, an actual drug cartel member who is directly responsible for thousands of deaths, only got a single life sentence.

Ross got screwed on his sentencing and it is totally unjustified.

Free Ross!

Re: A dark web tycoon pleads guilty, but how was he caught?

#70

Post by deadEndDave »

marta_morena wrote: post #55

This sounds fishy. He probably pleaded guilty as part of a plea deal, so law enforcement has a scapegoat and some meaningless "media success" in exchange for him getting a drastically reduced sentencing. They always do that, threaten people with insane penalties if they don't accept so shitty plea deal and if you are not super certain that you can win, you will likely accept that one, just because it seems "safer". T…

>> They always do that, threaten people with insane penalties if they don't accept so shitty plea deal and if you are not super certain that you can win, you will likely accept that one, just because it seems "safer".

Actually they don't.

What they do is tell you the maximum amount of jail time you can get for the crimes for which you are being charged with. If you're good and cooperate with them, then the DA tells the judge that and they work to get you a reduced sentence. Be a prick or attempt to impeded their investigation or fall on the sword for your "homies" and they have the authority to go after the stiffest sentence possible. Even then its up to the presiding judge to ultimately take into account what the DA has told them and what the defense presents for its part and decide sentencing along predefined guidelines.

Your entire comment is completely false and shows a total lack of knowledge of the US criminal justice system.

>> Innocent people plead guilty because they don't have the wealth and resources to win in court. USA is a shithole when it comes to law enforcement. Medieval and sad. Land of the free (as long as you are rich, that is).

You have the opportunity to be represented by a court appointed lawyer if you can't afford one. Depending on your case, if you actually do your homework, its pretty easy to find an attorney who will take your case for free. I've seen many, many low income defendants retain a real defense lawyer to try their case.

Also, you do not "win" in a criminal case, you are either found "guilty" or "not guilty".

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