It Was DPR, in the Tor HS, With the BTC

http://grugq.github.io/blog/2013/10/09/it-was-dpr/

by ctoth • 13 years ago

72 96 13 years ago

grugq.github.io

j_s• 13 years ago

Watch the author's 'OPSEC for hackers' presentation of the slides linked in the article:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XaYdCdwiWU

slides: http://www.slideshare.net/grugq/opsec-for-hackers

grugq12• 13 years ago

ta.

ihsw3• 13 years ago

It's a pretty good presentation, and it cannot be understated that good security is hard to quantify until shit hits the fan. Especially in an environment where "hackers are no longer the apex predator."

In case of living life on the edge (of legality), all it takes it one slip-up and then you're doing 40 years of hard time. In terms of predator-prey, hackers will now always be running and desperately looking behind them.

Good advice: Predators always love playing with their prey, so make sure you're not being manipulated.

kiba• 13 years ago

If I were still an anarchist/hardcore libertarian, hiring hitman would still be unacceptable.

(It doesn't still make me root for the FBI though)

grugq12• 13 years ago

The issue is less about any specific ideology, but rather the social environment he was immersed in. Other than radicals, drug seekers, drug dealers and undercover law enforcement officials, he doesnt seem have had much social interaction. His peer group was ideologically warped far away from societal norms. He had no outlet for either gaining ego validation (e.g. going to a bar and griping about his crap day at his startup cause some weed dealer ran off with $200,000); or social validation (e.g. "Hey everyone, my startup marketplace is doing really well! I've struck it rich due to my hard work and clever understanding of Austrian School economic theory!"). He had to talk with the same people that were drawing him further away from society, because he could not talk to anyone in mainstream society. This is a problem for almost everyone living a "high security" covert life.

I also strongly suspect that many of the undercover agents were acting as agent provocateurs, urging him on towards more extreme positions and actions. The Maryland Indictment reads like a set piece put-up job. I can believe that it was an operation with the dual intent of (a) documenting DPR committing a heinous crime, and (b) unmasking DPR, most likely though the wire transfer. Even if (b) failed, they would still have (a) to prosecute him with later.

VMG• 13 years ago

still, there was interesting discussion and even some praise in /r/Anacap:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/1nlyfd/l...

lmm• 13 years ago

Seriously? If you genuinely tried to hire a hitman then you're a danger to society and I'll side with pretty much anyone against you.

MichaelGG13• 13 years ago

He was left in a very terrible situation and decision. He was facing someone who was willing to destroy many other people's lives (assuming drug dealers would be arrested). If you take that as a given prior, then the step of deciding to prevent that person from hurting others seems like basic self defense (while noting that the USG prevented him from using other measures).

Edit: There's always still the possibility that DPR was aware he wasn't hiring hitmen, but felt it was the best negotiation tactic.

tedunangst11• 13 years ago

How did he come to be in this terrible situation where he was forced to make such a decision?

grugq12• 13 years ago

Yes, particularly for the second "hit" that he arranged (the one in the Complaint). However, the first "hit" (outlined in the Maryland indictment) seems to have been more of a set piece entrapment-alike. This was when he popped his online-hitman cherry, and it was the most difficult one for him. He seems quite distraught and upset in the messages, he has trusted this guy ("The Employee") as an admin, he loaned him the money for the "substance that would test positive as cocaine", he likely socialized with him and revealed a great deal of personal information.

I think the Feds played him (Ross Ulbricht) in this case and totally set him up for a fall. I accept that he stepped off that cliff himself, but I think it is likely that he was guided the whole way there by the Feds.

After this first hit, orchestrated from start to finish (?) by the feds, the second one seemed easier. He had learned to live with himself after the deed was done, he had pushed beyond that moral barrier of "don't have other people tortured and killed", and he had learned that violence can solve problems.

Now, as to whether this second "hit" was just him negotiating with a scammer, or whether he believed he was actually having someone killed. I think it is clear that without that first job, that first hand held walk through the dark side of the underground, he wouldn't have reacted that way.

I think he would have been less susceptible to the manipulations of the feds if he was in a normal social peer group. If he had some rational people who weren't inside the Silk Road bubble who could say "you want to have someone killed because they stole some SHA256 hashsums? Are you fucking insane?!?"

tptacek11• 13 years ago

The premise of this comment is that the harm of having someone killed is outweighed by the harm of reporting a community of people to law enforcement.

saraid2163• 13 years ago

(It doesn't still make me root for the FBI though)

Denouncing one side does not require you to cheer for the other. Just FYI.

rayiner3• 13 years ago

I find DPR to be a fascinating case study. Anarcho-libertarians often reject the use of force, except maybe in self-defense, on principle. But use of force is a fundamental interaction between organisms. It's one of the first modes of interactions young children come to understand. It's unrealistic to take it off the table. No matter how "civilized" you are, it's always lurking there as the most basic solution to conflicts. So here you have DPR, this smart, "civilized" guy. But when he's backed into a corner, he lashes out with violence just like any other animal would. In this case he didn't even have any reason to fear for his own life. He lashed out with violence to protect his material interests, just like an animal defending its kill.

nachteilig• 13 years ago

I remain surprised that he operated from America, especially if he was truly as socially isolated as this post suggests.

grugq12• 13 years ago

I am very surprised he remained in the US. I would have thought he'd take his BTC and run off to live with McAfee in Belize.

sschueller• 13 years ago

Isn't McAfee back in the US?

MichaelGG13• 13 years ago

His operational model should have been fine. He should have acted as if he was acting on the DEA's front lawn. He made fatal operational mistakes. If he was somewhere else, he may have even acted more carelessly.

Living somewhere else would be a minor hurdle. SR was an international site. Even without an extradition treaty, the feds would go to the country, say "psst, wanna hit a major international drug dealer?" And local police could bust him, jail him, then deport him, and then the USG could try him too.

If your opsec relies on you laughing from some small country, hoping legal barriers prevent your capture, you've totally failed.

Edit: He should have panicked as soon as agents visited him, but I guess he probably talked himself down. Probably figured "well they already have me or they don't", which, was probably true.

grugq12• 13 years ago

Yeah. He should have lammed it as soon as the feds first talked to him. Really he should have run much sooner. At that point, the only option for him would have been life as a fugitive on the FBIs most wanted list. It was too late.

The key question for me is still: how did the FBI locate the Silk Road hidden service servers? They never disclose how that was accomplished. If they had an assist from the NSA in breaking Tor, I would like to know. It has been shown that Tor hidden services are not anywhere near as secure as they are thought to be... but has anyone done a practical attack in the wild? Enquiring minds want to know!

Edit: looks like he did move after the feds showed up. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2013/10/09/living-with-r...

kybernetyk• 13 years ago

Well, at least he should have chosen a country where the maximum penalty for what he did is not open end. He may face several times life in the USA now while in Germany for example he would face max. 15 years.

Stately• 13 years ago

Am I the only person who was sure this post was going to mock excessive use of acronyms?

hackerboos• 13 years ago

I just thought it was a Cluedo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluedo) joke.

grugq12• 13 years ago

Yeah, it is.

grugq12• 13 years ago

Sorry.

saraid2163• 13 years ago

I'm personally disappointed he didn't round out the set of TLAs with THS.

fennecfoxen• 13 years ago

Actually, I was expecting the democratic peoples' republic of China. But then I realized it was missing a C.

AJ007• 13 years ago

Criminals isolate, target, and research individuals based on this information. This includes everything from simple identity theft to murder. You may also recall numerous yahoo email address "hacks" based off easily locatable answers to security questions of public figures.

There are some basic lessons here that are applicable to anyone using the internet, even just for casual reasons. That includes your parents or grandparents. What do you think the chances are that they would be able to proactively defend themselves against someone tearing apart their private lives based on information they didn't even know was public?

-Not sharing/linking email addresses an alias

How is this relevant? This could be as basic as not wanting to link your persona as a member of the town council to your postings in a World of Warcraft forum.

Even if your life is mundane and none of your hobbies are embarrassing this is still important. Forum posts, which most users treat as casual chat, along with many social media interactions are permanent, public, and searchable.

There is no compelling reason to allow anyone in the world to know an enormous amount of personal details about you. At least on your Facebook page, if Zuckerburg hasn't recently screwed with your privacy settings, you are narrowing the number of people who can look at these things.

I'm not going to endorse any particular services, but many sites allow you to search accounts by email address. Amazon, in particular, can reveal your public wishlist based on email address (rossulbricht@gmail.com shows an account but not a wishlist.) You can figure out a lot about a person from their wishlist + reviews.

Quite frankly I think this all is very relevant and mass marketable to anyone building tools and products to firewall personal information.

pearjuice• 13 years ago

Funny how everybody says that he should have done this and not done that. It is really an overwhelming experience to speculate and comment on past matters but don't forget that it was him who actually did it. Who actually ran the market place. Who cashed out and probably has reserves here and there. Who pressed that "submit" button on stackoverflow. You weren't capable of doing so. You think you have better ideas about it. That you could "disappear" and never get linked to the real "you". I am not daring you to do try it, as it can land you behind bars, but I am just saying that unless you actually experienced and lived all of this - the commentary is nothing more than a theoretical shim which will never become reality.

pstuart• 13 years ago

Ah, I could have written it in a weekend....

toadi• 13 years ago

This happens all the time. It's easy to make decisions if you now all the variables post factum. Sometimes you make decisions without all the knowledge.

For people analyzing the lessons learned it's easy...

MichaelGG13• 13 years ago

I'd agree with this sentiment except the mistake is a very fundamental, very flawed one: reusing the same ID. And it was made right at the beginning, when energy is highest. It's not like he made long mistakes over the years leading to an eventual arrest. He allegedly started off by posting with the same ID as his physical person.

esrauch• 13 years ago

Honestly it is more understandable to make that type of mistake at the beginning; there is no way he could have reasonably assumed that he would later have the level of fame that would make the feds run a high priority effort specifically to catch him.

grugq12• 13 years ago

Without performing "lessons learned" analysis on failures, how will we ever learn? Conducting this sort of exercise is critical to improving the capabilities of everyone who engages in clandestine activities. Dismissing it out of hand is remarkably short sighted.

mcintyre1994• 13 years ago

You don't have to have tried building an international drug ring to see fundamental errors in the way he did things though. His alias was sloppy and insufficiently isolated from his real identity. I don't claim I could have done better, I can think of theoretical improvements but won't claim I'd have implemented them in that situation. You're right that nobody can claim to know they wouldn't make mistakes, but I don't think there's anything illegitimate in pointing those mistakes out.

It Was DPR, in the Tor HS, With the BTC

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