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Protip to the cartels - pay top dollar to some world class engineers to setup a dark web market and you'll make buckets. Most if not all markets until now have

by stef25 5y ago

Protip to the cartels - pay top dollar to some world class engineers to setup a dark web market and you'll make buckets. Most if not all markets until now have been run by geeks with limited knowledge and skills, wading in to the criminal underworld and inevitably making rookie mistakes. Both Ross and the guy in Bangkok had their personal emails tied to the markets. Some kids running a big market from Germany connected to the server on their mom's wifi. The list goes on.

adriancr 5y ago
Setting up a dark web market is something most people would want to get anywhere close to... Imagine being responsible for facilitating murder-for-hire, sex trafficking and so on...
- Chris2048 5y ago
  I'm sure there are plenty of people who wouldn't care. Anyone who buys diamonds has blood on their hands too.
  - michaelmrose 5y ago
    I think there is a material difference between buying a diamond and directly facilitating the activities of the drug cartels. In theory everyone buys things that are made by people in shitty conditions because there isn't much direct visibility on the front end as to what kind of nastiness happened elsewhere in the supply chain. If you want that to change you have to make it illegal to do business with such folks not hope consumers fix it for you via the magic of the market.
    - Chris2048 5y ago
      It's unclear to me those shitty conditions (e.g. those of iphone manufacture) are net harmful to the poverty-stricken areas they affect - but I'm not sure that's not true of diamonds. I think it's also more jarring that diamonds are otherwise useless symbols of status. At least iphones trickle down in some way (e.g. allowing the proliferation of older gen smartphones even in poor countries).
- saba2008 5y ago
  Imagine having employer, who has no qualms about killing people and for whom you are a loose end. You need to be either professional criminal (skill set completely orthogonal to IT, so chance of somebody possessing both at professional level is miniscule), or a moron.
ldiracdelta 5y ago
We don't know how Ross and other dark web folks were caught, despite all the official stories. We know what the FBI _tells_ us was the security issue. However, the Snowden doc's reveal that they are instructed to construct other legitimate stories for how to implicate a criminal after the have compromised him in order to not reveal their tactics. The exact term they used in the docs escapes my memory, but we only know that Ross _was_ captured, but we have no clue how. Perhaps he had perfect op-sec, but the real security issue was a raft of 0-day attacks and then they signed up something in his name, later legally gagging him. We really have no clue.
- poooogles 5y ago
  >The exact term they used in the docs escapes my memory Parallel reconstruction is the phrase you're after.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- stef25 5y ago
  Ross did post on shroomery and stackoverflow with identifiable information ... In the case of the former it was clearly linked to the site. And those posts are still up. The guy in Bangkok had his personal email in reply-to headers of the the "welcome" emails being sent out. If that wasn't true, everyone who received the mail could have proven that. Parallel reconstruction may have been a occurred, it's true we won't know.

by stef25 5y ago

adriancr 5y ago

Setting up a dark web market is something most people would want to get anywhere close to... Imagine being responsible for facilitating murder-for-hire, sex trafficking and so on...

Chris2048 5y ago
I'm sure there are plenty of people who wouldn't care. Anyone who buys diamonds has blood on their hands too.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  I think there is a material difference between buying a diamond and directly facilitating the activities of the drug cartels. In theory everyone buys things that are made by people in shitty conditions because there isn't much direct visibility on the front end as to what kind of nastiness happened elsewhere in the supply chain. If you want that to change you have to make it illegal to do business with such folks not hope consumers fix it for you via the magic of the market.
  - Chris2048 5y ago
    It's unclear to me those shitty conditions (e.g. those of iphone manufacture) are net harmful to the poverty-stricken areas they affect - but I'm not sure that's not true of diamonds. I think it's also more jarring that diamonds are otherwise useless symbols of status. At least iphones trickle down in some way (e.g. allowing the proliferation of older gen smartphones even in poor countries).
saba2008 5y ago
Imagine having employer, who has no qualms about killing people and for whom you are a loose end. You need to be either professional criminal (skill set completely orthogonal to IT, so chance of somebody possessing both at professional level is miniscule), or a moron.

ldiracdelta 5y ago

We don't know how Ross and other dark web folks were caught, despite all the official stories. We know what the FBI _tells_ us was the security issue. However, the Snowden doc's reveal that they are instructed to construct other legitimate stories for how to implicate a criminal after the have compromised him in order to not reveal their tactics. The exact term they used in the docs escapes my memory, but we only know that Ross _was_ captured, but we have no clue how. Perhaps he had perfect op-sec, but the real security issue was a raft of 0-day attacks and then they signed up something in his name, later legally gagging him. We really have no clue.

poooogles 5y ago
>The exact term they used in the docs escapes my memory Parallel reconstruction is the phrase you're after.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
stef25 5y ago
Ross did post on shroomery and stackoverflow with identifiable information ... In the case of the former it was clearly linked to the site. And those posts are still up. The guy in Bangkok had his personal email in reply-to headers of the the "welcome" emails being sent out. If that wasn't true, everyone who received the mail could have proven that. Parallel reconstruction may have been a occurred, it's true we won't know.