SilkRoad domain Seized?

[KGambler]

Hell, they even confiscated his bitcoins. Why weren't the majority of them in a brain wallet? And still living in the USA? He should have been living incognito in Russia or SE Asia by now.

How do you know they got all of his bitcoins?

Now living in the USA...  Yeah that was incredibly stupid.  It was only a matter of time...

[wtfvanity]

However, the court documents note that Canadian law enforcers have said there was no record of a homicide taking place in White Rock, British Columbia at the time.

Do you really think a person on the silk road just went up and shot someone. They probably used a poison method.

Death by poison would be considered a homicide as well, Sherlock..

Not if they aren't looking for it. Look up Robert "Iceman" Kuklinski, many of the people he killed were never linked due to the fact he used poison and it looked like a heart attack.

Considering that proof of the murder was sent via a photo, the method probably left more of a mark than poison or a heart attack.

It is well known photos cannot be edited and there is no such thing as makeup or special effects

I'm just saying that a picture of someone just lying there, with no obvious signs of trauma, wouldn't be much proof.

And again... for not too much $$$, you could get someone to stage paint a convincing headshot wound and snap a photo..

[acoindr]

pretty obvious TOR has a vulnerability that is being actively exploited ...

A prior comment of mine is relevant here:

So I just looked into this, not thoroughly so someone please correct me where wrong, but have the following assessment.

The FBI conducted a successful operation against a big person in the Tor world named Eric Eoin Marques who runs a company called Host Ultra Limited. They are trying to extradite Eric to the US to face charges. I'm guessing Eric either distributed directly, or hosted sites dealing in child pornography. Apparently he was conducting business as a Tor Hidden Service.

Now, Tor Hidden Services is different than using Tor normally. Tor Hidden Services is what allows Silk Road to operate because the server itself can gain anonymity while still handling incoming client requests.

What is not readily apparent (to me) is how the FBI found Eric's servers, and what was done with them. It could be that his servers were found with investigative methods outside Tor. However, there does appear to be a way to de-anonymize servers using Hidden Services revealed in the following paper at a security symposium in May 2013:

Trawling for Tor Hidden Services: Detection, Measurement, Deanonymization

I only read the first couple pages but have no reason to doubt the claims. Whether or not the FBI used similar exploits for this case isn't apparent, but I'd say Silk Road looks vulnerable unless and until there is a patch or re-work of the Hidden Services protocol.

[Dalkore]

Crazy shit:

Wow I hate to say this.. but the owner of silkroad is an idiot..

And a murderer. We don't need murderers paying for "clean" or "un-clean" hits in BTC. What a piece of shit.

As many stated here, the fact he was caught is a good thing.

I second and third and whatever else this comment.  If this is true, his is a piece of shit and he will deserve whatever they throw at him.  He gives humans in general a bad name.  I so hope this is not true, people are not "things" you "take care of"

[RoadToHell]

However, the court documents note that Canadian law enforcers have said there was no record of a homicide taking place in White Rock, British Columbia at the time.

Do you really think a person on the silk road just went up and shot someone. They probably used a poison method.

Death by poison would be considered a homicide as well, Sherlock..

Not if they aren't looking for it. Look up Robert "Iceman" Kuklinski, many of the people he killed were never linked due to the fact he used poison and it looked like a heart attack.

Considering that proof of the murder was sent via a photo, the method probably left more of a mark than poison or a heart attack.

It is well known photos cannot be edited and there is no such thing as makeup or special effects

I'm just saying that a picture of someone just lying there, with no obvious signs of trauma, wouldn't be much proof.

And again... for not too much $$$, you could get someone to stage paint a convincing headshot wound and snap a photo..

Christ, What are you arguing about?  I just said that it was doubtful that the method would have been poison or something similar.  The reason I say that is because the "killer" supposedly sent a photo as proof of the kill.  It would be very easy to fake that if it was poison, wouldn't it?  I mean a LOT easier than using photo shop, makeup, or special effects.  The picture wouldn't be very different than if the person was just sleeping.  So if only a photo was sent as proof, it seems that the picture would have to be more convincing than something that looked like the victim was just taking a nap.

[Mike Hearn]

The "hit" was an obvious scam the moment you read about it. Whoever hacked his site knew he could extract cash from Ulbricht no matter what, but it's much easier to make him believe he's a winner than a loser.

The guy who was supposedly taken out with a wife and three kids generated no homicide or missing person reports. There is no record they even existed.

The fact that DPR would have done this should not surprise anyone. The moment he did those interviews with Forbes it became clear he was a dangerous lunatic. This is a guy who did not want drugs to be legalized because it would have made his website less relevant. You know, the policy that has turned Mexico into a warzone, he wanted that to continue because otherwise he feared people would decide they didn't want to overthrow their governments after all. The whole hippie peace and love thing was exposed as crap the moment he made those remarks.

[wtfvanity]

Crazy shit:

Wow I hate to say this.. but the owner of silkroad is an idiot..

And a murderer. We don't need murderers paying for "clean" or "un-clean" hits in BTC. What a piece of shit.

As many stated here, the fact he was caught is a good thing.

I second and third and whatever else this comment.  If this is true, his is a piece of shit and he will deserve whatever they throw at him.  He gives humans in general a bad name.  I so hope this is not true, people are not "things" you "take care of"

Might not have been as bad I guess if he didn't have such a unique name.

[Jenger]

Well this has me sweating a bit... What a bummer!

[Inedible]

Having read all of the quotes by him in the Forbes article (linked in this thread), I have to say he sounds like an upstanding chap (were it not for the fact he ordered a hit).

We'll see how much of an upstanding chap he is if he tries to make a deal with the prosecution by giving up associates. Let's see if his ideals really mean something to him.

Worth reading if you've not already done so:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/04/29/collected-quotations-of-the-dread-pirate-roberts-founder-of-the-drug-site-silk-road-and-radical-libertarian

[Noitev]

Why is btc crashing? theres thousands of BTC that are removed from the market. also, just an fyi, I'd just buy litecoins for the time being, i mean, atlantis is still up

[Mike Hearn]

Of course drug dealers don't want drugs legalized. DPR claimed he wasn't just a simple dealer but rather some ideological crusader for a better tomorrow (by which he meant: anarcho-capitalism, his idea of utopia). He wasn't only selling drugs remember, but also malware, forged documents, he experimented with selling weaponry, etc ...

[darkmule]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_mass_surveillance_disclosures

The Special Operations Division (SOD) of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration advises DEA agents to practice parallel construction when creating criminal cases against Americans that are actually based on NSA warrantless surveillance.[3]

I was thinking exactly this.  It could be they actually got their information from a network compromise they don't want widely known, so instead, they went looking for plausible alternate sources of the same information, and completed their evidence collection by traditional means.  It's not a certainty by any means, but certainly not total tinfoil and worth considering.

[TheRandomGuy]

This is great for bitcoin. Whenever anyone talked about bitcoin on the MSM they always mentioned SR.  

[wtfvanity]

Of course drug dealers don't want drugs legalized. DPR claimed he wasn't just a simple dealer but rather some ideological crusader for a better tomorrow (by which he meant: anarcho-capitalism, his idea of utopia). He wasn't only selling drugs remember, but also malware, forged documents, he experimented with selling weaponry, etc ...

Source?

[TheButterZone]

If the blackmailer pretended to be his own assassin, that would explain why there's not a conspiracy/solicitation to commit murder charge. When law enforcement does contract killer stings, they don't do it for kicks, they do it to put cuffs on.

[VolanicEruptor]

Of course drug dealers don't want drugs legalized. DPR claimed he wasn't just a simple dealer but rather some ideological crusader for a better tomorrow (by which he meant: anarcho-capitalism, his idea of utopia). He wasn't only selling drugs remember, but also malware, forged documents, he experimented with selling weaponry, etc ...

Source?

Source not needed.  One only had to visit SR to see this.

[greyhawk]

Of course drug dealers don't want drugs legalized. DPR claimed he wasn't just a simple dealer but rather some ideological crusader for a better tomorrow (by which he meant: anarcho-capitalism, his idea of utopia). He wasn't only selling drugs remember, but also malware, forged documents, he experimented with selling weaponry, etc ...

Source?

Yeah, source?

Are you mixing up SR and BMR?

[wtfvanity]

Of course drug dealers don't want drugs legalized. DPR claimed he wasn't just a simple dealer but rather some ideological crusader for a better tomorrow (by which he meant: anarcho-capitalism, his idea of utopia). He wasn't only selling drugs remember, but also malware, forged documents, he experimented with selling weaponry, etc ...

Source?

Source not needed.  One only had to visit SR to see this.

I don't think DPR was the one selling all of that. All of that was available on his marketplace. A little different, no?

[alexanderanon]

Of course drug dealers don't want drugs legalized. DPR claimed he wasn't just a simple dealer but rather some ideological crusader for a better tomorrow (by which he meant: anarcho-capitalism, his idea of utopia). He wasn't only selling drugs remember, but also malware, forged documents, he experimented with selling weaponry, etc ...

While I would question DPR for arguing against legalization (if he indeed said that) on the basis of some "holy crusade" against narcs everywhere, ultimately, his efforts to bring a viable online drug market to the masses have been highly successful (until today), and prove that such a possibility can be a reality. As long as you don't post real-identity email addresses, that is.

And what's wrong with forged documents? Or weapons?

[Anonymailer]

So this is what crashed BTC. One thing I'm curious about is how did that guy know the real identity of the seller who was blackmailing him? Were drug dealers signing up there with a legit name and address?