[tor-talk] Silk Road taken down by FBI

[mirimir]

On 10/04/2013 02:22 AM, shadowOps07 wrote:

> What kind of VPN provider did he use?

He had a dedicated exit IP, given that it was hard coded in his site for
admin access. That was also a risky move, in my opinion. He could have
lost the VPN account, and the IP. Better practice is using key-based
authentication.

Other than that, and the fact that it's a non-US VPN service, I've seen
nothing specific. There are numerous VPN services that provide dedicated
IP addresses.

> On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 9:27 PM, mirimir <mirimir at riseup.net> wrote:
> 
>> On 10/04/2013 12:44 AM, shadowOps07 wrote:
>>
>>> Yeah, but the country doesn't have the release the log to the fascist
>>> police state just because "Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty" is in place.
>>> They have the MORAL obligation to disregard the treaty. US is in no
>>> position to demand obligations from other countries. Rather, MLAT is a
>>> farce.
>>
>> Well, then, he picked the wrong country for his VPN provider. He also
>> picked the wrong country for his hosting provider. And he didn't keep
>> himself anonymous enough from either one.
>>
>> If we're going to be throwing blame around, I think that Mr. Ulbricht
>> deserves most of it. In my opinion, he misled perhaps a million people
>> into using his site. One could consider them fools, of course. They
>> provided names and addresses to drug dealers, and eventually to the FBI.
>> But is it fair to expect users to understand the technical and
>> operational challenges involved? I don't think so.
>>
>> But, as much as I enjoy debating this, it has nothing to do with Tor ;)
>>
>>> On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 7:58 PM, mirimir <mirimir at riseup.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 10/03/2013 11:33 PM, shadowOps07 wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Was the VPN located in the US? If not, then FBI doesn't have any
>>>>> jurisdiction outside of US.
>>>>
>>>> On p. 14 of UlbrichtCriminalComplaint.pdf, there's reference to a
>>>> "Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty".
>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 6:54 PM, Roger Dingledine <arma at mit.edu> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Thu, Oct 03, 2013 at 08:58:57PM +0000, mirimir wrote:
>>>>>>> So they did have the server before they knew who he was.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Careful there -- while I assume they didn't lie in their affidavit,
>> it's
>>>>>> quite reasonable to assume that they investigated all sorts of things,
>>>>>> all sorts of ways, and then afterwards chose to write down exactly the
>>>>>> set of facts that when lined up in the correct order makes it look
>> like
>>>>>> a clean solid case.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It's a slippery slope from there to 'parallel construction', but I
>> think
>>>>>> it's standard practice to start with some leads and use them to find
>>>>>> more solid facts, and it's also standard practice to not mention all
>>>>>> your leads in your affidavit.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> To be more concrete, their job here is to link the guy to the website.
>>>>>> So if they had a pretty good idea of who the guy was, but not enough
>>>>>> evidence to bust him, it makes sense to me that they would go find one
>>>>>> of the servers, collect all the evidence they can from it, and hope
>>>>>> to find something specific that points back at the guy. And who knows,
>>>>>> maybe they did that several times before they found something they
>> liked
>>>>>> enough to build a case from it.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Your theory that "he was sold out by one of his administrators" also
>>>>>> fits fine here -- the administrators pointed to the guy but then they
>>>>>> needed to build a solid-looking case.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> We also knew
>>>>>>> that he was sold out by his VPN provider. Hopefully, the identity of
>>>>>>> that VPN provider will come out soon.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Why? So everybody can abandon that VPN and move to a different one
>> that
>>>>>> also responds to subpoenas but hasn't been written about in a
>>>> high-profile
>>>>>> court case yet? :)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --Roger
>>>>>>
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