Silk Road: FBI on drug-trading platform in the Tor network - Heise Newsticker

The FBI has managed a major coup in the fight against drug trafficking: The investigators were apparently the operator of the Silk Road – a notorious illegal marketplace – arrest and take the side of the net. Silk Road allegedly had around one million registered members. The service was operated as a so-called hidden service in Tor network. These hidden services are designed to keep the actual IP addresses of the server secret.

the Silk Road were completed criminal activity of all kinds, was traded among other drugs, credit card information, Trojans. Equally varied are the offenses which accuses the FBI of the suspect, said to have been active under the nick name “Dread Pirate Roberts”.

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No connection under this onion address. now When you call the Silk Road, an indication of the FBI appears. As is apparent from the indictment that the security journalist Brian Krebs has posted online (PDF), begin the charges for breaches of the law on drugs and go over the unauthorized intrusion into computer systems to money laundering. Dread Pirate Roberts is said to have committed even a user of the Silk Road for a murder of another user. The latter had threatened to disclose the identities of thousands of new members.

According to the FBI document investigators have made more than 100 undercover test purchases at Silk Road since November 2011. The FBI received drug shipments from more than ten countries and subjected the samples to a laboratory analysis. It was found that the drug actually corresponded to the advertised on the underground platform of purity.

cash were admitted to the illegal marketplace exclusively Bitcoins. The digital money was not paid directly, but through the escrow service of the operator. Used for this purpose on the Bitcoin wallets, the investigators presented the equivalent of about 2.5 million U.S. dollars safe. According to the FBI, over 1.2 million transactions were completed on Silk Road, which was generated a turnover of 1.2 billion U.S. dollars. The operator should have collected a fee of around 80 million U.S. dollars.

starting point for the successful investigation of the operator was obviously a posting in a forum about drugs, in which the prisoner drew attention shortly after the opening of its market place. From there, the FBI followed the digital trail continues to a bitcoin forum in which the suspect stated a Gmail address which contains his actual name.

Updated on October 2, 22 clock: Other than initially indicated no weapons were traded at Silk Road. (rei)