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Operator of Silk Road 2.0 Website Charged in Manhattan Federal Court

fbi.gov

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

#61

Post by deathhand »

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…

"successfully infiltrated the support staff" - This doesn't rule out that they didn't sniff out their credentials and logged in as them.

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

#62

Post by krapp »

Touche wrote: post #52
disposition2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would just be nice if they operated under the same judicial rules that they are enforcing. It seems like a large portion of US agencies (who enforce 'justice' in one way or another) these days feel like the same laws they are enforcing don't necessarily apply to them, especially when said law(s) limit their ability to do their job. Or more simply put, exceptional circumstances have now become a rule rather than an…

Specifically which laws did the FBI break in this investigation?

Something something parallel construction, no doubt.

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

#63

Post by krapp »

noarchy wrote: post #59
krapp wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shame on the US government for threatening the public with the enforcement of its own laws.

By "its" do you mean the "public" or the US government? These are the government's laws, and it enforces those laws on said public.

> These are the government's laws, and it enforces those laws on said public.

Well, yes.

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

#64

Post by chatmasta »

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 infitrating groups of nerds in basements. It's frustratingly hilarious.

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?

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

#65

Post by yourad_io »

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 maybe you're safe?

edit: This is a genuine question, not a rhetorical one. Am I missing something?

[1] http://www.onion-router.net/Publications/locating-hidden-ser...

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

#66

Post by s_q_b »

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 implies an agent established a direct connection to a server in Benthall's C&C chain. Once there, they simple hacked (or subpoena or Mutual Legal Assistance Treatied) their way back to him.

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

#67

Post by celticninja »

jim_dnaley wrote: post #26

They located Silk Road 2.0's server in an unspecified way, not directly related to their undercover agent on the support staff. Given that two other darknet markets (Black Market and Cloud9) have been shut down today, and they didn't specify how they located the SR2 server, it seems plausible that law enforcement have a vulnerability to locate servers over the Tor network. From the complaint: "In or about May 2014, t…

Also given the recent decision in the Ulbricht case that their method of obtaining the server location and contents was not enough to throw out the case may have given them confidence to use the same tactic again. Now they know the law does not apply to them they almost have free reign to bust these markets with whatever resources they have at their disposal.

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

#68

Post by LordKano »

msandford wrote: post #23
greensoap wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing. Prop 47 is a state measure for simple possession. This is conspiracy to traffic, interstate wire fraud, federal crimes prosecuted under federal statutes. Even if these were state charges Prop 47 didn't really change much (or anything) sentencing for sales.

Conspiracy to traffic? Doesn't seem like it. Is it something that makes trafficking easier? Sure. But who did the trafficking? The seller and the buyer. Wire fraud? If it's the sale of something illegal I don't think that suddenly makes it wire fraud. Further, he's not charged with that. The sale is still completed. It's an illegal sale, but not fraud. Fraud would be if someone said they were going to sell you cocain…

Agreed, it sounds more like criminal facilitation than conspiracy.

IANAL but I am well read. If I understand correctly, conspiracy requires an intent to break the law. If you do something with the knowledge that someone might be breaking the law but you have no specific knowledge, it's going to be very difficult to make a case for conspiracy.

Facilitation is pretty much a given.

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

#69

Post by chatmasta »

How is the FBI going to handle an inevitably popular decentralized marketplace? Will they prosecute anyone who downloads the marketplace software onto their computer?

All the pieces are in place for a true p2p marketplace. It doesn't exist yet, but it will soon.

EDIT: I should read about OpenBazaar.

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

#70

Post by mschuster91 »

chrisdevereux wrote: post #49
mschuster91 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seize the server running the tor software serving as entry-point for your hidden service and grab the private keypair in order to impersonate the hidden service. The .onion address is iirc a hash of the public key.

By entry-point, do you mean a server that you would typically own/rent, or some other server in the tor network that you would not normally control?

The first one. In an ideal world (tm) you have two physical servers srv0/1, both with full-disk encryption and some form of remote KVM. srv0 is connected to the internet on eth0 and to srv1 on eth1.

Then you set up networking in a way that the only thing aside from absolute required services running on srv0 is your tor gateway, and no traffic from eth1 may pass through to eth0.

On srv1 you set up the usual services, e.g. mysql, lighttpd and whatever you need hosted.

Ideally, you keep srv0 and srv1 in different datacenters, if not even different countries.

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