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Naive - Silkroad???

garethEds

By garethEds
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garethEds

garethEds

Posted
Posted

Both yesterday and today I've been reading about this now infamous website called Silkroad that has only been accessible through the TOR web browser. I feel really naive in that I'd never heard of it. Had anyone else?

 

Yes I've heard of Tor and of bitcoin but never Silkroad. The Guardian reporter today said she spend 10 minutes on Google finding references to this sort of site - I wouldn't know where to start. I mean you can hardly type into Google 'Illegal hidden darknet site selling drugs' (or can you?).

 

Guess I'm just naive in the ways of the web. Did anyone else know about it?

 

Gareth

Steve21

Steve21

Posted
Posted

Yeah, was the biggest sort of "bad" site going :) Lots of stuff you can buy on there, take your pick really! Anything illegal was for sale, drugs, hitmen etc Not really surprising it was taken down eventually.

 

Steve

Garacesh

Garacesh

Posted
Posted

I knew of The Silk Road by reputation, but always questioned its authenticity. Having never used Tor myself I haven't been there.

 

I had no doubts it was a real website, and truth be told I did believe there was drug trafficking and the selling of malware/virusses/rootkits etc. Even prostitution.

Can't say I honestly believed the 'assassinations for bitcoins' rumours, though.

DrPerceptron

DrPerceptron

Posted
Posted

I've known about both versions of Silkroad - the popular MMORPG and the unrestricted marketplace - for a while.

 

Is it a problem that you didn't know about it? There are also several replacements to Silkroad ready to come online soon to fill the gap. TOR contains lots of dodgy stuff, part of the reason it exists and part of the reason NSA/GCHQ are investing a lot of time and money into resources and technologies to destabilise and de-anonymise users.

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Sunnyknight

Sunnyknight

Posted
Posted
I've known about both versions of Silkroad - the popular MMORPG and the unrestricted marketplace - for a while.

 

Is it a problem that you didn't know about it? There are also several replacements to Silkroad ready to come online soon to fill the gap. TOR contains lots of dodgy stuff, part of the reason it exists and part of the reason NSA/GCHQ are investing a lot of time and money into resources and technologies to destabilise and de-anonymise users.

 

This ^

localzuk

localzuk

Posted
Posted

The fun thing about this is that a load of its users are terrified and posting on Reddit, worried that the authorities are coming for them.

 

What I say is - live in fear!

Garacesh

Garacesh

Posted
Posted (edited)

Then 'what to do about the other one' would surely be 'file a report with the appropriate authorities'?

 

I have no difficulty in believing the 'darknet' has numerous websites seriously violating child protection and exploitation laws. There are, unfortunately, some sick people out there that will seize the opportunity.

 

Honestly, that's one of the primary reasons I've never ventured into Tor and the .Onion domains. I don't want to risk 'stumbling' across something like that. Admittedly, such illegal activities will likely still be protected in some manner.. But the risk..

Edited by Garacesh
X-13

X-13

Posted
Posted (edited)
Then 'what to do about the other one' would surely be 'file a report with the appropriate authorities'?

 

I have no difficulty in believing the 'darknet' has numerous websites seriously violating child protection and exploitation laws. There are, unfortunately, some sick people out there that will seize the opportunity.

 

I'm currently writing up a CEOP report... I'm stuck on the "who it happened to".

 

Honestly, that's one of the primary reasons I've never ventured into Tor and the .Onion domains. I don't want to risk 'stumbling' across something like that. Admittedly, such illegal activities will likely still be protected in some manner.. But the risk..

 

I wish I never decided to test out TOR...

 

 

Le EDIT: Ok... CEOP is the wrong place and IWF is UK only. I'm at a loss here.

Edited by X-13
Garacesh

Garacesh

Posted
Posted
I'm currently writing up a CEOP report... I'm stuck on the "who it happened to".

I wish I never decided to test out TOR...

That sounds like a story my morbid curiosity wants to hear, but my critical thinking does not.

 

CEOP is the wrong place? Why is that?

I'd have thought that you'd be able to pass it to them due to it being online, and they would be able to pass it on to the relevant people?

LeMarchand

LeMarchand

Posted
Posted
Honestly, that's one of the primary reasons I've never ventured into Tor and the .Onion domains. I don't want to risk 'stumbling' across something like that. Admittedly, such illegal activities will likely still be protected in some manner.. But the risk..

 

Surely the risk is only dependent on what you go looking for? If you just use TOR to (say) obfuscate your visits to carp fishing sites it's no worse than using your normal browser (apart from "they" would have an easier time tracking your leisure pursuits). It's not as if you have to pass through a TOR gateway site offering you all kinds of illegal stuff.

garethEds

garethEds

Posted
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Posted
I've known about both versions of Silkroad - the popular MMORPG and the unrestricted marketplace - for a while.

 

Is it a problem that you didn't know about it? There are also several replacements to Silkroad ready to come online soon to fill the gap. TOR contains lots of dodgy stuff, part of the reason it exists and part of the reason NSA/GCHQ are investing a lot of time and money into resources and technologies to destabilise and de-anonymise users.

 

Hiya - no not a problem that I didn't know about it - but I often read reports like this and as someone who is on the web a lot, reading different forums etc I'm suprised I never read abou it. The media make it out to be a really popular website - even so - not many people I've spoken to this morning in my world have heard of it.

 

Gareth

LosOjos

LosOjos

Posted
Posted
not many people I've spoken to this morning in my world have heard of it.

 

I'd take that as a sign you keep good company :)

 

[not that anyone who has heard of it is automatically bad of course (I'd heard of it)]

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X-13

X-13

Posted
Posted
That sounds like a story my morbid curiosity wants to hear, but my critical thinking does not.

 

CEOP is the wrong place? Why is that?

I'd have thought that you'd be able to pass it to them due to it being online, and they would be able to pass it on to the relevant people?

 

CEOP [from what I can see] only let you report things about SPECIFIC people. [i.E little jimmy was touched by someone]

 

There's no option for "here's a big load of child abuse images".

 

Surely the risk is only dependent on what you go looking for? If you just use TOR to (say) obfuscate your visits to carp fishing sites it's no worse than using your normal browser (apart from "they" would have an easier time tracking your leisure pursuits). It's not as if you have to pass through a TOR gateway site offering you all kinds of illegal stuff.

 

I was actually looking for a list of .onion websites... this was one of the first.

 

Seems like .onion/TOR is one big problem.

Sdrawkcab

Sdrawkcab

Posted
Posted (edited)

I was actually looking for a list of .onion websites... this was one of the first.

 

Seems like .onion/TOR is one big problem.

 

Hidden Wiki? As far as I know, Anonymous actually have a campaign where they constantly edit the Hidden Wiki so that all the links to CP boards redirect to the FBI website. But yeah, there's some pretty awful stuff on TOR. Same as pretty much any other "anonymous" network though, and it doesn't mean we should do away with them altogether.

 

My understanding, by the way, is that one does not go looking for .onion websites. If you need to access one, you will know the URL already. That's kind of the point of them.

 

I had no doubts it was a real website, and truth be told I did believe there was drug trafficking and the selling of malware/virusses/rootkits etc. Even prostitution.

Can't say I honestly believed the 'assassinations for bitcoins' rumours, though.

 

It was like Ebay/Amazon but for drug trafficking pretty much. I saw a few rootkits/0-days for sale there early on but that was about it. Prostution/human trafficking wasn't allowed on there, nor was the sale of guns or CP. In fact, it was suprisingly strict about the sort of illegal content that was allowed for sale, pretty much limiting it to drugs and fake ID only. I never bought anything from there and I'm glad I didn't, since even people who only bought legal stuff from there have been busted by the FBI in the time since the site went down.

 

After hearing about it back in 2011, I ended up doing a lot of research into how it worked because I couldn't believe people were able to so brazenly violate the law. It was really a very clever implementation of TOR/bitcoin, which I guess is why it was able to operate so successfully for so long. The reputation system for vendors was actually really effective at keeping scammers out of the site, and the login system used two-factor authentication to stop people from setting up fake SR websites to steal accounts. I don't think it was quite as big as the media likes to make out, though - there were around 150,000 users total in the end.

 

Edit: For some good ol' schadenfreude, the SR forums are still up on the .onion address they were using before the marketplace went down. If you take a look at them, you can see terrified vendors making posts like this:

 

How do you meet people to sell the stock you have left over since the site went down? I have over $5000 worth of product left over and I don't have many friends :(
Edited by Sdrawkcab
Garacesh

Garacesh

Posted
Posted (edited)
My understanding, by the way, is that one does not go looking for .onion websites. If you need to access one, you will know the URL already. That's kind of the point of them.

 

That, too, was my understanding. That being said, I have no doubts that some unscrupulous sites are a lot easier to access than others, and nothing inherently states a .onion domain is bad by default. It stands to reason that, through those, someone, somewhere, will have taken 'Anonymity on TOR' a little too seriously and not bothered to protect their precious CP community.

 

Maybe I'm being a tinfoil-hat-wearing, hype-believing git. Maybe. But given that I have no real reason to use TOR in the first place, makes no sense putting myself at risk.

 

Edit: As for the pushers with excess stock, maybe they should just split it up and mail it to their most loyal/best paying customers. Their customers are happy for the free gift, and they no longer have stockpiles of mysterious white powder that they need to shift. Everybody wins!

Edited by Garacesh
Sdrawkcab

Sdrawkcab

Posted
Posted
Edit: As for the pushers with excess stock, maybe they should just split it up and mail it to their most loyal/best paying customers. Their customers are happy for the free gift, and they no longer have stockpiles of mysterious white powder that they need to shift. Everybody wins!

 

Unfortuantely they can't do this, as they shouldn't have any of their customer addresses anywhere. SR let vendors view the address of the buyer once, after which time it was deleted from their servers forever. The idea was that the vendor would only click "show me the address" when they had everything packaged up, write the address on the package, and then close the window so that no record was kept. Obviously there's no guarantee that they did this, of course, but as your success as a vendor on SR largely depended on your reputation rating, it would be in their interest to follow the rules as closely as possible.

Garacesh

Garacesh

Posted
Posted

Then it's the ol' 'dump it down the loo' trick, I'm afraid.

 

Hm, the more I discover about the inner workings of Silk Road, the more I understand why it became so successful. That's actually a good idea.

X-13

X-13

Posted
Posted
Hidden Wiki? As far as I know, Anonymous actually have a campaign where they constantly edit the Hidden Wiki so that all the links to CP boards redirect to the FBI website. But yeah, there's some pretty awful stuff on TOR. Same as pretty much any other "anonymous" network though, and it doesn't mean we should do away with them altogether.

 

Aye. But, I wasn't going to mention it in case curiosity got the better of someone.

 

My understanding, by the way, is that one does not go looking for .onion websites. If you need to access one, you will know the URL already. That's kind of the point of them.

 

I heard it was slow, so I wanted to test it with .onion and non-.onion websites.

 

It is slow, BTW. Really, really slow. But, only on .onion.

Sdrawkcab

Sdrawkcab

Posted
Posted
Hm, the more I discover about the inner workings of Silk Road, the more I understand why it became so successful. That's actually a good idea.

 

It was really really well designed. The site admin just made the mistake of asking bitcointalk.com for help with designing a website which sounded suspiciously like SR using an account which was registered to his personal gmail address (literally [email protected]). As with all things on the internet like this, the weak link in the security chain was the human at the top.

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