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

http://www.wired.com/2015/05/silk-road-2/

by jmhuret • 11 years ago

86 44 11 years ago

junto• 11 years ago

I know this is in hindsight, but having watched The Matrix, I would have been distrustful of an online handle called "Cirrus".

dvdfvo3• 11 years ago

Cirrus?

_broody• 11 years ago

Cyrus was the name of the traitor in The Matrix. Coincidence...

... Surely.

amyjess• 11 years ago

tl;dr: Ross was a colossal idiot who ignored warnings about the shoddy state of his opsec.

I hate to say it, because Ross and I have a few mutual friends, but the guy was an idiot, and it's looking more and more like he deserved what he got for being so utterly stupid.

Estragon2• 11 years ago

It's pretty amazing how the use of Tor drives this kind of wishful ignorance. You see it all the time on /r/darknetmarkets

fredgrott• 11 years ago

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

granfalloon• 11 years ago

Deserves it because he was stupid??? Or do you mean because of what he did?

ufmace2• 11 years ago

Calling him stupid seems to kinda miss the point to me. I think it's more that when you're up against the Feds, especially on something so deeply entrenched as being illegal worldwide as distributing drugs on a massive scale, you're going to get caught eventually, because it only takes one mistake. Sure, he was kinda dumb and made a lot more than one mistake, but how much better could anybody here do? Enough to keep the Feds away for how long, exactly? Another year or two maybe?

I kinda sympathize with his position in a way. He was clearly in over his head both on the technological front and on the administration front, despite making piles of money. When that happens in a normal business, you hire some help. But how do you find help to hire for such a massively illegal operation? Finding anyone who could be trusted is a tough problem, much less someone who can be trusted and also has strong technical skills.

fweespeech2• 11 years ago

I think the main thing is I would have sold it wholesale for Bitcoin as soon as it was stable and profitable enough that I could make $10 million USD.

He hit that point pretty early on.

The again, I wouldn't start an illegal business intentionally...so there is that.

hurin• 11 years ago

but how much better could anybody here do?

Well, Kim Dotcom is still kicking it.

As for Ross, the evidence might have been circumstantial at best if his un-encrypted notebook wasn't grabbed.

wsxcde• 11 years ago

Enough to keep the Feds away for how long, exactly?

In your question lies the answer to another: why are exit scams so prevalent in bitcoin marketplaces?

avn2109• 11 years ago

I would have run my operation from Russia or China, and made sure to never traffic anything illegal in my host country.

BoxKeyboard• 11 years ago

Eh. I dunno. When you get in that deep it kinda feels like it's an inevitability, one way or the other. I hate doing it because it's almost cliche at this point, but Avon Barksdale has a pretty good point:

"Comin up the way we did, you know, you kind of expect that. Waitin on it. See, the thing is, you only got to fuck up once. Be a little slow, be a little late, just once. And how you ain't gonna never be slow? Never be late? You can't plan through no shit like this, man. It's life."

davidmr• 11 years ago

So yes, in retrospect he made some very basic errors. That said, it's pretty easy to call someone stupid after reading a long-form piece informed by a full indictment of their crimes produced by an intergovernmental criminal investigation and subsequent trial.

I have no experience in the matter, but I imagine that being the kingpin of such an organization tends to pull one's head in so many directions that it's easy for smart people to do dumb things unknowingly.

futuretext• 11 years ago

This would make an amazing movie.

dvdfvo3• 11 years ago

You can be sure it is in early development stage.

maxcasey• 11 years ago

I just hope they make it more real documentary style like "The Internet's Own Boy as opposed to stupid and dumbed down like the Steve Jobs movie. No matter where you fall on the legal/ethical spectrum, you have to admit it's an awesome story.

late2part• 11 years ago

Great article, I continue to be worried about the perceived disregard for due process in these law enforcement investigations

fiatmoney• 11 years ago

"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 by the kind of people who enjoy roughing up suspects, even when it harms a larger investigation.

sliverstorm3• 11 years ago

Sounds more like the old adage about how when you're holding a hammer-

arikrak2• 11 years ago

There were a whole bunch of articles a while ago about the rise of using SWAT teams for all sorts of arrests. Think from the officers' perspectives - they watch all these movies, they go and become FBI officers, and then they barely get to do anything exciting. So they naturally jump at the chance to do an exciting arrest. I guess there should be some kind of check-and-balance in place on the type of arrest, maybe for some arrests they should need to get a special warrant or something.

MichaelGG2• 11 years ago

In the first part, it talks about how the agent loves breaking down doors at 6am in his Doc Martens. I.e. loves being a literal jackbooted thug.

My only consultation is that hopefully one day prohibition will be fixed, and these agents will reflect and see their careers contributed nothing of value to the world. That they just caused trouble, like a bully. That countless lives, marriages, children got screwed up due to their pointless actions. I know, probably they'll remain delusional, but one can hope.

ufmace2• 11 years ago

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.

nickysielicki• 11 years ago

I don't understand why you guys are accepting that the server hosting the hidden service randomly responded over the clearnet.

This is so incredibly improbable, to me.

caseysoftware2• 11 years ago

While the "topless girl" is part of the story, was anyone else surprised to see a drawing?

When did Wired become NSFW?

forgotpasswd3x• 11 years ago

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 reading an article with that image in it than he'd get upset with me for reading some article so completely unrelated to work on the clock.

Women have breasts. If you work somewhere where images of breasts are more of an issue than you know... not working at work, then maybe you should just not work there. It's not Wired that's at fault. It's your ridiculously backwards employer.

caseysoftware2• 11 years ago

I usually don't respond to trolls but this time I will.

I'm less concerned about my employer - after all we have the post-slaughter Charlie Hebdo cover framed on the wall - and thinking more of female coworkers. In case you haven't noticed, there is a huge "women are oppressed!" theme being pushed.

True or not, something like this is likely to set them off and result in negative consequences for you.

Lawtonfogle• 11 years ago

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.

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

Related Stories