Bitcoin Forum

Is there any jurisdiction in which it's illegal to access the Silk Road?

Certainly.  Speech isn't free everywhere.

Where are you?

United Kingdom -- reasonably free here (most of the time!) I think...

The nifty thing about Silk Road is that it can only be accessed through the Tor network.  While it doesn't make tracking your IP/Location impossible, it sure makes it a hell of a lot lot harder (and more expensive) than most authorities are willing to deal with to bust someone over.

In most countries accessing the site wouldnt be illegal. Purchasing and owning what you typically buy there,  probably is tho.

I've never heard of anyone being arrested in the UK for only looking at a drug dealer. I presume looking at Silk Road is perfectly legal if you're not buying anything.

It doesn't seem to me like it would be a problem at all. The way the tor network is designed is pretty brilliant. Just recently stumbled upon it myself, was pretty impressed.

So as far as computer applications go, just using Silk Road is reasonably safe?  Any hacking issues that someone needs to worry about just from installing the software?

You dont install any "silk road" software. All you need is tor (/vidalia/torbutton). These apps are all opensource and in that sense, perfectly safe.

Anyone ever use the tor functionality in Vuse?  Is it straight forward or are there other suggestions for a client?

No idea about vuse, just use the official client:
https://www.torproject.org/

Feel free to download one of the bundles which comes with its own firefox browser for tor, or download tor, vidalia (GUI interface for Tor) and the torbutton extension and use your existing firefox and toggle with that button between regular and tor browsing. You can find it all on that site.

Thanks for the info P4man. 

Not too sure that I have a use for installing a client, but it might be worth it just to see what it's like.  It's still a very abstract thing in my mind right now.  Until I see what the client interface and "silk road" network look like all I can think of is a web browser on the internet.  I get that the internet is what's used and different clients can have different looks to them (I assume so anyway), but I wonder things like... is there a way to search for stuff and can you link in and out of normal network sites...?

Thats precisely what it is. I only visited it for the first yesterday as I was curious myself. its just a (very, very basic) website. After you installed tor and torbutton, it opens -rather slowly- in your browser, just like any other website, it just has a weird looking address.


Sure you can link. But you can only access silk road if you have Tor running and your webbrowser is configured for tor (ie, you pressed the TorButton). In that mode you can visit any other website you want, but traffic will be routed over tor, meaning its slow and anonymous. But otherwise its the same internet you browse every day.

Whilst accessing the site itself isn't likely to be an offence, buying some of the goods on there definitely
is of course. As far as I'm aware, no country has yet made an offence to actually access the website,
but that might happen before long if the powers-that-be are unable to find ways to close it down.

 Definitely worth the trouble to take a look.  It is like stumbling into the marketplace in a Hollywood libertarian dystopia.  Oh, and don't forget to take a look at the forum there.

Btw, keep in mind that with TOR, when you access regular websites (or anything else in the internet) the exit nodes can see pretty much the exactly same thing someone with a device between your computer and the internet cable in the wall can.

Which is not very different than without tor, except that the exit nodes are tor users, rather than companies/ISPs or possibly hackers listening in. If you dont use HTTPS or other encryption, consider everything you browse and send public, with or without tor. All tor does is anonymise.

It only anonymises the source IP, anything else is kept as anonymous or unanonymous as without TOR.

And so  it "only" anonymises  you as a user. And yes people should be aware its not a substitute for encryption to prevent eavesdropping, thats no different than when not using tor, but tor does exactly what it claims to do: hide your identity (not your traffic).

It doesn't hide your identity if it is revealed thru your traffic.

Yes, it's pretty remarkable that the Silk Road doesn't do https, only http.  I wonder why that is.  The CIA/NSA must have tor exit nodes...  You could really have some fun by hijacking some high-profile accounts there...

HTTPS would be good I guess, but its not uncrackable and might give a false sense of security. People there use PGP encryption to encrypt all their communication (at least the non retarded ones do).

They don't use https? Woah 0.0

Ah, PGP authentication would help a lot.

Browse around on the site. Seems like all the sellers list their PGP private keys.
I suppose there are good reasons why they dont use HTTPS. Like, who is going to apply for the SSL certificate?
Im also not sure how secure SSL really is, Id rather trust PGP.

Traffic to SR never goes through an exit node.

When you go to a hidden service the "exit node" is the node hosting the service. So its an unencrypted http connection to (I assume) localhost

But the node before that, you could call exit node, no? And it could be an FBI computer.

In the node before that, its still encrypted by Tor.

Ah, yeah, i forgot it was a site inside TOR.

heads up, TOR small vid http://www.technologyreview.com/video/?vid=315

  Oh.  Thanks for the explanation.

I'm running tor atm.  Would setting tor up as a non exit relay help the network (I don't want to be able to know what stuff i'm hosting).

And in combination with something like peerguardian or savepeer? Trying to get some info bout them, but don't know if they're working.

I think the digital aspect of silk road is pretty safe (for now) but its more the postadress i'm concerned about. Allready tried or not?

Tnks for the link!

Not very informative.  Wikipedia has an explanation which is much more relevant to this discussion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)#Hidden_services

ITT: FBI agents  :D :D

Imo are silk road similar sites and of course every other illegal transactions atm the most important BTC circulations for stabilizing the currency...

my2cents

Thoughts:

- as a hidden service, SSL is redundant. SR's .onion address *is* the signature of the public key you're using to set up the connection to SR. That's the nice thing about hidden services.
- It's probably legal in a lot of jurisdictions to merely access the site. It's not displaying child porn, after all. And SR is selling legitimate stuff last I looked; in http://www.gwern.net/Silk%20Road#preparations you can see screenshots of 2 of the non-drug sections - military helmets and miscellaneous services
- racerguy: setting up as a middleman node would help the network and would also make your browsing faster, as I understand it. (IIRC, when you run as a middleman or exit node, Tor cuts an entire hop out of all your browsing because all the strangers' traffic going *into* your node now serves to camouflage your own particular traffic.)

Thats cool! And that explains the lack of ssl.
So basically the traffic is all encrypted, and moreover, without the key, you have no way of knowing where the server is? Do I understand that correctly, that every peer forwards the traffic, but can not know if its forwarding to another peer or the actual server?

However it works, its pretty clever.

Not quite sure I been trying to get  on it for a.few days and.as far as I can tell the site is down for upkeep

I just tried, and couldnt get on it either. I wonder if some entity managed to shut it down? If its maintenance, youd expect some page saying so.

says so on the wiki that some up keep is going on and it could be down for a few days. I am praying it has not been shut down I just heard of it been s little behind the times.

You wouldn't be hosting anything, rather your relay would just be bouncing/relaying the connections, if I understand it correctly.

have noticed its been extremely slow to get on it and browse the site today too.

I heard that even if you do buy from there, and it gets found at customs, they still cant do you for it, as there is no proof you paid for it. If there was alot going to the same address, they might be able to get a warrent to search the place.

But since anyone can send anything to anyone, all it takes is someone to fall out with someone else and send them a package of poorly packed weed and then they are busted. Just wouldnt work like that

I sometimes watch some of the TV programs about customs, and they say when they get a package, they setup a controlled delivery to see if the person will sign for it.. but then how many times have you signed for something you dont know what it is?

I wonder if this could be used somehow to make bitcoin payments more anonymous. Route a payment through Tor somehow?

No one is going to be able to track down where the payments come from. its as safe as it needs to be

My understanding is that the trick here is to hook up a miner through tor.  Any bitcoins it mines will be anonymous, to the extent that they cannot be authoritatively associated with any IP address.

Authorites are not going to try and track down bitcoins lol!

Its fairly trivial to match a payment with an IP, and for authorities in most cases, also trivial to match the IP with your ID. Unless you jump through hoops doing the payement, bitcoin transfers are not anonymous to authorities with access to IP logs.
Since in the US high ranking senators are calling for closing silk road down, it doesnt take much imagination to see FBI set up shop on silk road and lure in some drug buyers at least.

That sounds correct. Although that does require either some serious hashing power or a very small habbit :)
I also think this requires solo mining so...

Yes, definitely solo mining, so it would take a while.  But assuming all subsequent transactions were conducted similarly, it would be pretty ironclad, as far as untraceabilty/deniability goes, as far as I can tell.  Certainly there is a lot of much lower-hanging fruit out there...

No reason to solo mine. Just visit your favorite pool through Tor.. Very few of them even require a valid email address.

But what about the payout? How do you make that go over tor? If you dont, its got your IP attached to it.

I think mb300sd must be right, and I must be wrong.  Makes perfect sense that a mining pool would let you join in through tor.

To access the website, yes. But can you configure the miner to communicate with the pool over tor? Im not sure you can. It uses http, but I dont know if it works with a proxy.. And if you cant,  there the pool's log files that would point to you.

Moreover, you would have to keep your bitcoins at the pool and spend them from there directly, rather than transferring them to your own wallet, which I suppose is possible but rather annoying as you cant control the amount of the payouts, you risk sending too much or too little.

This seems like a bad thread that gives legitimacy to the complaints about bitcoins being used for illicit activities.

There is no lack of legitimacy to the claim. But I wouldn't see it as a "bad thread". People use USD to do bad things all the time, that doesn't deter people from using USD.

If you want to truly help, start a legit business or ask your local stores to start accepting bitcoins :)

You dont need a thread to give legitimacy to that claim, because it is true, like it or not, bitcoin is used for that. Just like cash, gold and diamonds are used for illegal trades rather than bank accounts or paypal. So what?  Only shows me criminals arent stupid and if anything, the fact criminals endorse it proves its pretty good. Why shouldnt anyone else take advantage of it for legal uses too?

As for silk road specifically, I think its a good thing really. I dont use drugs, I hope my kids wont use it, but Id rather have my kids buy their weed through silk road than by going to look for a shady dealer somewhere. I also think its high time we decriminalize drugs (which isnt the same as encouraging). Silk Road is a good step in that direction, but thats just me.

You can send ALL network traffic over tor.  I have tested ssh through it.


You can't just move them to a different, anonymous wallet?

Not to go off topic but is anyone having a hard time accessing silk road... I have not been able to get on in over 4 days always times out.

The software must work with a SOCKS proxy, not all software does. Im not saying it couldnt work, but have you tried with a miner app?

Hosted where? There is always an IP.

No problems here -- Tor running smoothly, as is connection to SR.

Its not because tor is running that your miner is using it.

Ok, say I make a payment of 10btc to address 12345abcde... How can they track that and link it to my PC?

They get a court order, confiscate your PC, find your wallet matches the sending address.

You guys are so funny.

bitcoin is a ponzi scheme and yet you pretend to have the high moral ground when it comes to free trade and you condemn something like silk road.

Laughable.

An encrypted wallet fixes that.
The only thing laughable here is your apparant ignorance of what a ponzi scheme is.

... or deleting the address you sent to, from Address-book i mean. Having the wallet encrypted would not save your ass if police or a court wants to match all your receiving addresses in case you did break the law, only priv keys go encrypted (nice feature if you ask me)

When you make that payment, you send a broadcast message to the network. Anyone receiving that broadcast can see your IP as the origin of that payment, simply by logging his firewall traffic.

No!

When he makes that payment, he sends a message to few peers ( the connected peers, 8/9 ... ).
Only them can see your IP, and they can't know that you are the first client that made the transfers.

Then they will send the transaction data to their near/connected peers, and this repeats on all the network.

I think Silk Road is exciting cause I want to see if the govs can shut them down or not. Guess they will try to go after the buyers/sellers and scare of new buyers/sellers if they can't get the Silk Road ppl.

They cant confiscate your pc, without knowing it was you that made that transaction..

so the 10 people that it gets broadcasted to can see your IP? correct yes, but still, how will the police find you? check millions of computers logs for your ip across several countys? they cant do that.

There is way too much work involved. They will not be able to track your IP. Even looking at the block explorer, they cannot see where the transaction was initiated from. They dont have the skill, the knollege, or money to even bother trying. Even if something like this did go to court, they are not transactions, there is no currency as its not reconised as one. They dont know if a transaction can be fabricated by someone else. They dont understand it enough.

Seriously, they cant do shit about it. They cant even prove it was you that made the transaction. I got busted in 2008 for warez, but they couldnt prove that it was actually me that was sharing them, just that my computer was used, which could of been done remotely by hackers. They couldnt even prove that the logs on the pc that showed me logging in with my password and running the torrent programs was even real, since a text editor could create them, and the dates are not solid evidence since the system clock can be changed so easily. Case was dropped and i got my pc back - with all the stuff. All they will try and do if they suspect something is get you to confess, if you dont, then there is fuck all they can do about it!

Even if the people selling it using bitcoins got busted by the police, it wouldnt be for dealing, even if they told them they were selling the drugs for bitcoins, then converting the bitcoins to currency, bitcoins isnt a reconised currency, it would only be for posession.

I cant believe so many people are threatting about getting caught.

Wouldnt the timestamps be a dead giveaway?

Time stamps can be changed easily. Still the police wouldnt be able to find the person who made the "transfer", even if they wanted to.

It always amazes me how rude the internet is.

For those that are "retarded", what is PGP and how can I hook it into the tor browser?

For the record I'm not selling.

PGP (or, more precisely, OpenPGP - "PGP" is actually a commercial product by Symantec implementing this protocol; there is a free open-source implementation called GPG) is a public-key encryption protocol, used mainly for email. It is not related to Tor in any way, and can be used with any email service. Note that PGP only encrypts messages, so that nobody other than the intended recipient can read them; it does not make you anonymous. Be sure to use an anonymous email account if you plan on using it for things that... require anonymity.

All Linux distros come with GPG already installed (though you may want to install a GUI front-end such as KGpg (for KDE) or Seahorse (for GNOME) if your distro doesn't already have one).
For Windows, I recommend Gpg4win (http://gpg4win.org/).

Thanks for the recommendation of Gpg4win (http://gpg4win.org/)! Just a few days ago i was looking for an easy encryption solution, and this looks to be just that.

If you've got a Mac, try GPG Tools (http://www.gpgtools.org/).

It does everything you need with GPG, but my favorite feature is the Finder integration. After you install it, you can right-click on any file in the Finder and you get the following options under Services:

http://i46.tinypic.com/zo4z6.png

I can't imagine its technically illegal to access the silk road from anywhere free like USA, Canada, EU etc

maybe it is from China

its what you do while your there that makes it illegal :P