6 ms·

Australian police prosecute man for buying drugs via Tor and Silk Road

38 points by jval 14y ago

damian2000 14y ago
I don't think they circumvented Tor. The police tracked him via mail deliveries, then just seized all his computers and mobile phones to get evidence.
- jval 14y ago
  Thanks for that, I'll change the article title. I was going off this Ars article which made it seem as though the Australian cops were quite suggestive, but you're probably right. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/australian-cops-tout-arrest-of-man-for-bitcoin-drug-deal/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/australian-cops-t...
- duaneb 14y ago
  Yea, this is just a really stupid person.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
drivebyacct2 14y ago
It's amazing the stupid things people do to compromise their own identity on Tor. You could take all of my computers and you'd never know that I've used Tor (unless you installed a hardware key logger and then replanted the device)
- huihe9849hjjgkg 14y ago
  Or viewed your comment history on HN.
  - drivebyacct2 14y ago
    I guess I'm fortunate that I live somewhere where it's not illegal to admit to using Tor. My point was more simple that Tor isn't compromised.
- hexonexxon 14y ago
  Or looked at your ISP logs. Did you use Obfsproxy every single time or tunnel Tor through a VPN to your bridge node? probably not
  - seabee 14y ago
    If you're doing it right you aren't doing it at home.
    - duaneb 14y ago
      Wouldn't a VPN be good enough?
      - Tuna-Fish 14y ago
        They can still monitor traffic peaks and match those to when criminal activity occurred.
        duaneb 14y ago
        Would that hold up in court? Anyway, I would just saturate the VPN.
  - Tuna-Fish 14y ago
    No-one sane does anything seriously criminal trough their own link. I built a simple directional wlan antenna. In my small city, within range of my balcony, there are some 300 open or WEP-protected networks. Not that I'd ever steal someone else's internet...
    - stormen 14y ago
      You wouldn't steal a car...
    - nwh 14y ago
      Breaking into someone's network is quite a nasty offence in itself. In Australia (where the story is from), that's hundreds of thousands in fines and jail time.
- drivebyacct3 14y ago
  care to shed some light on how you accomplish this?
  - drivebyacct2 14y ago
    https://tails.boum.org/ https://tails.boum.org/
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- pc86 14y ago
  Where are there resources someone can look at to not do those stupid things? I've wanted to use Tor for a while but I always got the impression it was a waste of time because it seems pretty easy to (not) do something that destroys the anonymity.
hexonexxon 14y ago
They didn't circumvent anything. (1) over 10,700 clear text msgs about drug dealing (2) announced to a forum probably watched by every police outfit in the world he was in Australia and about to start importing a lot of product and selling locally, basically inviting Aus feds to contact him and set up stings (3) imported drugs directly from a known drug exporting country (netherlands) through probably the toughest customs on earth who scan every package, who no doubt flag everything including envelopes from there for investigation. I do like his defence of being the village idiot though. Seems to have worked since he's only getting 2-3yrs, which means 1yr and parole. "Mr Jassar told Judge Murphy that Ms Ormsby was in court and that her piece – Silk Road: The eBay of Illegal Drugs – was the first views on the website by a journalist." lol Adrien Chen, your thunder stolen.
- kapnobatairza 14y ago
  I do agree with all of your advice, but there is something more to this. If it was a simple package intercept alone, there would be no way for them to link the suspect to SR, let alone link him to a certain SR profile, let alone getting access to private information on that profile (his transaction history, which I assume was given as evidence of the 11 alleged importations). Either he gave up that information somehow (as the TOR browser doesn't save credentials), used a username he is "known" to use on the clearnet, or the more nefarious possibility: It could be likely that Aussie feds set up a fake NL vendor account in order to set up a "deal" with that target. This would give them his real name and address (thus linking him to the SR profile) and ultimately establish PC for the raid. By sending him small amounts to establish trust (giving the feds evidence of the 11 "importations") they probably got him with a much larger importation charge then he otherwise would have gotten.
  - leoedin 14y ago
    It seems more likely that they seized his computers. The guy clearly wasn't very good at covering his tracks (lots of text messages show that) and he plead guilty - an indication that he was to some extent cooperating with the police.
jacques_chester 14y ago
Most of the time, when a stern announcement is made about how We Will Catch You, they try to hint that they have magical cryptography-busting powers. All BS, of course. Most such people are charged because Customs open a percentage of all packages entering the country and have a look inside. And it's not necessarily at random; the method for reliably fooling a good sniffer dog has yet to be devised. Until someone solves the problem that you can't easily do dual key encryption on molecules, people are going to keep getting busted by old fashioned customs and police work. If he made a mistake, it wasn't some Tor-related misconfiguration. It's that he didn't bribe the right Customs officials.
- wahnfrieden 14y ago
  Good points. Though Tor exit nodes can be run by or run under the surveillance of governments.
  - hexonexxon 14y ago
    SR is .onion you don't use exit nodes to get to it. The only way they could get you by running infrastructre is if they controlled enough entrance and internal nodes they could do a timing attack, especially with SMF telling the world when everybody is logged in but why bother, everybody just eventually drops dimes on themselves through massive opsec violations like this one guy who announced the tiny town he lived in and that "cops will never suspect my packages because the place is so small" /facepalm. He's probably the only Tor user for 100 miles
    - nwh 14y ago
      Tor Metrics estimates around 5000 users within Australia, which means that there's probably a very good chance that he is not the only Tor user in his area. https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=direct-users&start=2012-11-02&end=2013-01-31&country=au&events=off https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=direct-users...
      - drcongo 14y ago
antihero 14y ago
I really wish governments would stop policing the substances we put into our bodies. It really is none of their business.
LatvjuAvs 14y ago
What a great news for our free civilization. Drug free society ruled by iron fist!

38 points by jval 14y ago

damian2000 14y ago

I don't think they circumvented Tor. The police tracked him via mail deliveries, then just seized all his computers and mobile phones to get evidence.

jval 14y ago
Thanks for that, I'll change the article title. I was going off this Ars article which made it seem as though the Australian cops were quite suggestive, but you're probably right. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/australian-cops-tout-arrest-of-man-for-bitcoin-drug-deal/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/australian-cops-t...
duaneb 14y ago
Yea, this is just a really stupid person.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

drivebyacct2 14y ago

It's amazing the stupid things people do to compromise their own identity on Tor. You could take all of my computers and you'd never know that I've used Tor (unless you installed a hardware key logger and then replanted the device)

huihe9849hjjgkg 14y ago
Or viewed your comment history on HN.
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  I guess I'm fortunate that I live somewhere where it's not illegal to admit to using Tor. My point was more simple that Tor isn't compromised.
hexonexxon 14y ago
Or looked at your ISP logs. Did you use Obfsproxy every single time or tunnel Tor through a VPN to your bridge node? probably not
- seabee 14y ago
  If you're doing it right you aren't doing it at home.
  - duaneb 14y ago
    Wouldn't a VPN be good enough?
    - Tuna-Fish 14y ago
      They can still monitor traffic peaks and match those to when criminal activity occurred.
      - duaneb 14y ago
        Would that hold up in court? Anyway, I would just saturate the VPN.
- Tuna-Fish 14y ago
  No-one sane does anything seriously criminal trough their own link. I built a simple directional wlan antenna. In my small city, within range of my balcony, there are some 300 open or WEP-protected networks. Not that I'd ever steal someone else's internet...
  - stormen 14y ago
    You wouldn't steal a car...
  - nwh 14y ago
    Breaking into someone's network is quite a nasty offence in itself. In Australia (where the story is from), that's hundreds of thousands in fines and jail time.
drivebyacct3 14y ago
care to shed some light on how you accomplish this?
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  https://tails.boum.org/ https://tails.boum.org/
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
pc86 14y ago
Where are there resources someone can look at to not do those stupid things? I've wanted to use Tor for a while but I always got the impression it was a waste of time because it seems pretty easy to (not) do something that destroys the anonymity.

hexonexxon 14y ago

They didn't circumvent anything. (1) over 10,700 clear text msgs about drug dealing (2) announced to a forum probably watched by every police outfit in the world he was in Australia and about to start importing a lot of product and selling locally, basically inviting Aus feds to contact him and set up stings (3) imported drugs directly from a known drug exporting country (netherlands) through probably the toughest customs on earth who scan every package, who no doubt flag everything including envelopes from there for investigation. I do like his defence of being the village idiot though. Seems to have worked since he's only getting 2-3yrs, which means 1yr and parole. "Mr Jassar told Judge Murphy that Ms Ormsby was in court and that her piece – Silk Road: The eBay of Illegal Drugs – was the first views on the website by a journalist." lol Adrien Chen, your thunder stolen.

kapnobatairza 14y ago
I do agree with all of your advice, but there is something more to this. If it was a simple package intercept alone, there would be no way for them to link the suspect to SR, let alone link him to a certain SR profile, let alone getting access to private information on that profile (his transaction history, which I assume was given as evidence of the 11 alleged importations). Either he gave up that information somehow (as the TOR browser doesn't save credentials), used a username he is "known" to use on the clearnet, or the more nefarious possibility: It could be likely that Aussie feds set up a fake NL vendor account in order to set up a "deal" with that target. This would give them his real name and address (thus linking him to the SR profile) and ultimately establish PC for the raid. By sending him small amounts to establish trust (giving the feds evidence of the 11 "importations") they probably got him with a much larger importation charge then he otherwise would have gotten.
- leoedin 14y ago
  It seems more likely that they seized his computers. The guy clearly wasn't very good at covering his tracks (lots of text messages show that) and he plead guilty - an indication that he was to some extent cooperating with the police.

jacques_chester 14y ago

Most of the time, when a stern announcement is made about how We Will Catch You, they try to hint that they have magical cryptography-busting powers. All BS, of course. Most such people are charged because Customs open a percentage of all packages entering the country and have a look inside. And it's not necessarily at random; the method for reliably fooling a good sniffer dog has yet to be devised. Until someone solves the problem that you can't easily do dual key encryption on molecules, people are going to keep getting busted by old fashioned customs and police work. If he made a mistake, it wasn't some Tor-related misconfiguration. It's that he didn't bribe the right Customs officials.

wahnfrieden 14y ago
Good points. Though Tor exit nodes can be run by or run under the surveillance of governments.
- hexonexxon 14y ago
  SR is .onion you don't use exit nodes to get to it. The only way they could get you by running infrastructre is if they controlled enough entrance and internal nodes they could do a timing attack, especially with SMF telling the world when everybody is logged in but why bother, everybody just eventually drops dimes on themselves through massive opsec violations like this one guy who announced the tiny town he lived in and that "cops will never suspect my packages because the place is so small" /facepalm. He's probably the only Tor user for 100 miles
  - nwh 14y ago
    Tor Metrics estimates around 5000 users within Australia, which means that there's probably a very good chance that he is not the only Tor user in his area. https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=direct-users&start=2012-11-02&end=2013-01-31&country=au&events=off https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=direct-users...
    - drcongo 14y ago

antihero 14y ago

I really wish governments would stop policing the substances we put into our bodies. It really is none of their business.

LatvjuAvs 14y ago

What a great news for our free civilization. Drug free society ruled by iron fist!