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> “The Silk Road” was the first of a phenomenon that became widely known: Darknet Markets. The history is way off here, Silk Road was one of the first two comp
by 3131s 8y ago
> “The Silk Road” was the first of a phenomenon that became widely known: Darknet Markets.
The history is way off here, Silk Road was one of the first two completely public darknet markets (the other being the short-lived Open Vendor Database) but there were private darknet markets long before, e.g. The Farmer's Market.
> Use of the Internet to facilitate the marketing and sales of physical goods - drugs, weapons, false identification papers - began latest in the late 1990s, but usually focused on local geographic markets in major cities. This was due to the fact that payment and delivery still required in person meetings.
Not so, back then and still to this day drug dealers simply throw a stack of cash in the mail. The clearnet markets for "research chemicals" all operated this way and went basically unchecked until Operation Web Tryp in 2004, which began an era of harsher enforcement of the Federal Analogue Act.
- mirimir 8y agoWell, it was Adamflowers "long before". And its OPSEC was over-the-top lame. I mean, Hushmail? But then, DPR was also very sloppy.
- krageon 8y agoIf you really look at how the big names have gotten busted, you will see that their opsec is bad with no exceptions. Apparently people that actually know the craft don't see enough upside to running a marketplace like that, which should make you wonder about the ones that still exist.
- mirimir 8y agoYes, indeed. I did look, rather carefully, a couple years ago. And OPSEC failure (sometimes spectacular) explained all of the the major busts that were widely reported.[0] However, I did not research criminal court records. Accessing that data is nontrivial, especially for someone using a pseudonym, who can't show up physically, has no ID, and can't pay with a mainstream credit/debit card. Few, if any, courts accept Bitcoin etc. Also, I made no effort to check for parallel construction, except by looking for inconsistencies among published accounts of investigations. And I do understand that the US DEA's Special Operations Division (SOD) funnels information from the NSA, CIA, etc to federal investigators.[1] With the understanding that "the utilization of SOD cannot be revealed or discussed in any investigative function".[2] And that includes outright perjury, if necessary. Just as we've seen regarding the use of Stinger intercepts. It's hard to say whether people who know tradecraft well just prudently avoid running dark markets, as you say. Or whether they do, but don't get caught. Time will tell, I guess. At least, if remaining ones do get busted. But if they don't, there's the implication that the operators practice good OPSEC. Or, that they're honeypots ;) 0) https://www.ivpn.net/privacy-guides/online-privacy-through-opsec-and-compartmentalization-part-2 https://www.ivpn.net/privacy-guides/online-privacy-through-o... 1) https://www.deamuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/042215-DEAMuseum-LectureSeries-MLS-SOD-transcript.pdf https://www.deamuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/042215-... 2) http://www.reuters.com/article/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130805 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130...