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Found this in one of the recent HN submissions: http://krebsonsecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/UlbrichtCriminalComplaint.pdf http://krebsonsecurity.com/
by shazow 13y ago
Found this in one of the recent HN submissions:
http://krebsonsecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/UlbrichtCriminalComplaint.pdf http://krebsonsecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Ulbric... / Mirror: http://www.scribd.com/doc/172773407/Ulbricht-Criminal-Complaint-Silk-Road http://www.scribd.com/doc/172773407/Ulbricht-Criminal-Compla...
According to the filing, they found him through a combination of posting his personal @gmail.com address on the bitcointalk forum from the same account used to market Silkroad. Further, they found that his LinkedIn account somewhat corroborated the timeline/interest in what Silkroad is. Page 24 for the juicy details of how they identified him.
Also there is a section about murder-for-hire in Canada. Pretty wild stuff.
Update: Also he posted on Stackoverflow asking questions about Tor with his real name, then later changed his name. Supremely conspicuous.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- dave_sullivan 13y ago"All told, the site has generated sales revenue totaling over 9.5 million Bitcoins and collected commissions from these sales totaling over 600,000 Bitcoins. Although the value of Bitcoins has varied significantly during the site's lifetime, these figures are roughly equivalent today to approximately $1.2 billion in sales and approximately $80 million in commissions." Incidentally exactly how much Walter White made... That's a strange coincidence, or perhaps one of the clerks that gets paid to make up statistics for drug related criminal complaints is a breaking bad fan...
- acallahan 13y agoI think you should flag this as breaking bad spoilers - not everyone has finished watching the show
- atlbeer 13y agoThat's a year and a half old info. It can't be a spoiler forever.
- pyre 13y agoI don't think that the actual amount was mentioned until the last run of episodes. Prior to that I only remember it being a huge pile of cash that they had "stopped counting."
- pavel_lishin 13y agoI don't think that an amount of money constitutes a spoiler, unless that very specific amount has something to do with a specific plot point. ("Ouch, my cancer! If only I had $80,000,001 exactly!")
- BlackDeath3 13y agoI always err on the side of "it's a spoiler". If it's not in the show's trailer, I treat it like a spoiler. I know that I'm personally much more sensitive to spoilers than a lot of other people, so it always annoys me how somebody says something thinking they're not spoiling anything without fully thinking through the implications of what it is they're saying. It's almost arrogance, really, to simply assume that you know what will and will not spoil some given experience for another person.
- samstave 13y agoHave you seen Titanic? It sinks. Seen JFK? He dies.
- alexeisadeski3 13y agoWHAT???? More spoilers!!
- pavel_lishin 13y agoJesus dies. The Zebra did it.
- ealloc 13y agoSo this means the FBI now owns 600,000 bitcoins (5% of all bitcoins)? Probably more, since they also control the (presumably large number of) bitcoin stored in accounts on Silk road. Seems like this could lead either to the legitimation or deligitimation of bitcoin as the FBI must assess their worth. It also gives the FBI the ability to mess with bitcoin markets if they choose, by flooding supply.
- MichaelApproved 13y agoThese numbers are over the lifetime of the site. I bet many of the bitcoins earned were sold/exchanged. It also includes revenue numbers which was paid out to sellers.
- batbomb 13y agoIf it's the same person, there's a Ross Ulbricht who has a BS in Physics from UT, and would be 29. Best friends with this guy[1], who lives in SF (from Austin), and declares himself as best friends. https://twitter.com/RJPinnell https://twitter.com/RJPinnell http://renepinnell.com/homepage.html http://renepinnell.com/homepage.html
- kanzure 13y agoI have emails from both of these individuals in my inbox from a few years ago.
- grbalaffa 13y ago> revenue totaling over 9.5 million Bitcoins According to this that's close to the current total supply of all bitcoins: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Total_bitcoins_over_time.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Total_bitcoins_over_time.p... The graph shows the supply in 2013 at around 9.5 million, same number as what the article claims.
- nullc 13y agoAt the moment: "total_amount" : 11784364.79571183 Though some of that is lost forever, of course.
- leoedin 13y agoIt's worth remembering that the "Revenue" number would count bitcoins twice if they were used in two transactions. If bitcoins used to buy something on the site were then used by the seller to buy something else, the revenue would be twice the total bitcoins used.
- makmanalp 13y agoThis gets very scary on around page 21. EDIT: But interestingly looks like canadian police can't confirm.
- cheez 13y agoGeneral rule of thumb if you're doing something illegal: shut up.
- r00fus 13y agoSo… don't talk about Fight Club?
- jstalin 13y agoVery interesting. Start on page 24 for the technical details.
- gdubs 13y agoThat's a real page-turner. I found this particular item funny on page 30: "Based on my training and experience, I know that criminals seeking to hide their identity online will often use pseudonymous usernames to conceal their identity."
- mikeyouse 13y agoThat statement is much less absurd in context. He posted a question about connecting to a Tor hidden service with PHP on Stack Overflow. He didn't realize it puts your full name next to the question (and he had signed up with his real name), so literally 1 minute after posting the question, he changed his full name to a "pseudonymous username". He then changed his SO registration information from firstname.lastname@gmail to a fake name at a fake server.
- __david__ 13y ago> …so literally 1 minute after posting the question, he changed his full name to a "pseudonymous username". If this is true then how did they catch it? Does SO keep records of all name changes? Did they give that info to the FBI? Do the FBI scrape SO and save all versions of the data? Was this data collected from PRISM?
- underwater 13y agoI assume the FBI subpoenaed all information related to the account from SO, which would likely include a full history of changes.
- CodeCube 13y agoThe exact question I had ... though I guess if they're tracking all network data, then they could have just gone back and looked up the history of the SO post.
- pbhjpbhj 13y ago>he had signed up with his real name // Seriously?! Like "hey guys I'm starting a server for the illegal trade in drugs, but it's on Tor so nobody will know who I am, sincerely I M Anidiot". Oh and just in case my names not distinctive enough here's my Gmail account so you can trace back all my IP connections and verify when I'm online and such.
- LaSombra 13y agoVery interesting to know how the government agents worked on this case and some of the steps to identify DPR
- samcrawford 13y agoFantastic find and read! Interestingly, the FBI agent that wrote that document and requested his arrest warrant is the same one cited as tracking down Sabu of LulzSec: http://nymag.com/news/features/lulzsec-sabu-2012-6/index3.html http://nymag.com/news/features/lulzsec-sabu-2012-6/index3.ht...
- xSwag 13y agoLink to that pdf is down, anybody got a copy of it?
- shazow 13y agohttp://www.scribd.com/doc/172773407/Ulbricht-Criminal-Complaint-Silk-Road http://www.scribd.com/doc/172773407/Ulbricht-Criminal-Compla...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- teebs 13y agoI just read through it. They introduce a lot of evidence from their forensic analysis of the Silk Road servers, but they don't seem to explain how they got access to the servers. Did anyone find that in there?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- haxxorfreak 13y agoOCR'd and searchable version: https://www.dropbox.com/s/szjkt48tt0rlhpi/UlbrichtCriminalComplaint.pdf https://www.dropbox.com/s/szjkt48tt0rlhpi/UlbrichtCriminalCo...
- epsylon 13y agoThank you for that. Why do the US legal system still use typewriters in 2013 ?
- mpyne 13y agoThey probably literally just scanned-in a printout of it. Likely they do this to avoid the issues of improper PDF redactions that got famous a few years ago. Do the redaction on real paper (or not) and just always scan it in, and it's nearly foolproof. And trust me, we get a lot of fools in the government. ;)
- Aloisius 13y agoIs there some evidence that this was produced using a typewriter?
- autodidakto 13y agoThe font is obviously "American Typewriter".
- jessaustin 13y agoIs that the one Dan Rather's source used?
- asciimo 13y agoThank you!