8 ms·

Everything we know about Ross Ulbricht, outdoorsy libertarian behind Silk Road

29 points by RougeFemme 13y ago

conductor 13y ago
So, DPR was identified because Ross made really amateur level mistakes for a man in his position: 1. Was using the same pseudonym in several places. 2. Was advertising the Silk Road. He asked people what do they think about it: "Let me know what you guys think." [1, page 25] - this just suggests that he is connected with it. 3. Used his name (then changed to the same pseudonym he was using in other places) to ask a question about how to connect to Tor using Curl in PHP. He just could ask how to connect to a SOCKS5 server using Curl in PHP whatsoever avoiding mentioning the Tor. 4. Was not using Tor in public WiFi network at cafe. 5. Was giving interviews, long interviews. FBI could correlate his style of writing with what he writes under his own identity. 6. The most grave mistake: he posted his personal Gmail account using his pseudonym (which he was using to advertise the Silk Road) in the Forum asking for a "IT pro in the Bitcoin community" [1, page 26]. [1] - http://cryptome.org/2013/10/fbi-silk-road.pdf http://cryptome.org/2013/10/fbi-silk-road.pdf
- dpapathanasiou 13y ago
  Number 3 was huge because the stackoverflow answer was used on the site nearly as-is: Based on forensic analysis of the Silk Road Web Server, I know that the computer code ... includes a customized PHP strip based on 'curl' that is functionally very similar to the computer code described in Ulbricht's posting on Stack Overflow, and includes several lines of code that are identical to lines of code quoted in the posting. http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/10/02/silk_road_s_dread_pirate_ross_ulbricht_asked_stack_overflow_question_under.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/10/02/silk_road...
  - gojomo 13y ago
    That code-identicality alone doesn't necessarily mean much: lots of people come later and will use the public question/answer code in their own work. (Only together with the other pseudonym correlations, it means more.)
    - dpapathanasiou 13y ago
      Right, it wasn't just the fact that the code was the same; it was that he initially posted those questions under his real name.
      - Blahah 13y ago
        Absolutely none of this is evidence of his guilt, it's all just very loose circumstantial suggestion. If this is all it takes to convince people of someone's guilt in a huge criminal case, we're all doomed.
        mpyne 13y ago
        Circumstantial evidence has sometimes been enough for "beyond a reasonable doubt" in many cases over the past hundred years. I guess we were doomed since before then?
        mseebach 13y ago
        "Probable cause" is all you need for a warrant. With the warrant you secure the "beyond any reasonable doubt" evidence.
        rayiner 13y ago
        No, the financial transactions will prove his guilt. This is for finding him in the first place and getting the necessary warrants. Also, note that this evidence is for the indictment, which is what it takes to bring the charge, not a full statement of the case at trial.
- cabalamat 13y ago
  He certainly did make mistakes. I wonder if the next Silk Road will be open sourced? If it is, and its author becomes hors de combat, the one after him will have an easier base from which to start.
  - MichaelGG 13y ago
    The actual site and system seems rather simple. The other Tor merchant sites I've seen look much better than SR. The real issue is trust (both in the site and vendors), and open source won't help there.
    - cabalamat 13y ago
      > The actual site and system seems rather simple I daresay it is. But even a simple web site hakes time and effort to build. And getting security right is always non-trivial. > The other Tor merchant sites I've seen look much better than SR You may well be right; I've never used any of them. > open source won't help there. If building a new darknet ecommerce site was a simple as: sudo apt-get install silk-road don't you think there'd be more of them? The lower the barriers to entry, the sooner someone will build something the authorities can't shut down.
gbrindisi 13y ago
I am going to be naive here but could someone explain to me how it is possible to legally dox a person this way when there still isn't a court sentence that demonstrate that this guy is indeed DPR?
- TrainedMonkey 13y ago
  "the man federal prosecutors say is behind the infamous contraband market Silk Road" - note how they never claim he actually is DPR. They merely "report" that federal prosecutors say that.
  - Blahah 13y ago
    except in the title, where they explicitly claim he was behind Silk Road.
    - genwin 13y ago
      Good point. If he's acquitted he'll have a good case of slander.
iterationx 13y ago
He wrote an interesting manifesto on freedom, https://www.facebook.com/notes/ross-ulbricht/thoughts-on-freedom/108140845903395 https://www.facebook.com/notes/ross-ulbricht/thoughts-on-fre... unfortunately soon he will find himself locked in a cage.
- mpyne 13y ago
  How does his "interesting manifesto" contrast with the freedom of persons not to be murdered because they are inconvenient to his business? I don't think it's unfortunate at all that he'll be locked up. He's a murdering thug, at least twice over by his own admission.
  - jsnk 13y ago
    How do you know he's a murderer already? He's not found guilty of placing a murder yet.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      > He's not found guilty of placing a murder yet. Guilt is for the legal system to decide, and I'll let it take it's course. But that doesn't require me to act as if I'm blind or can't understand evidence and reason.
  - slackson 13y ago
    Wasn't the data the guy was blackmailing him with the information on sellers on the site? Between 100+ people getting 5+ year jail sentences (arbitrary numbers here) and two people dying, the later might seem more acceptable to a strong libertarian.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      > Between 100+ people getting 5+ year jail sentences (arbitrary numbers here) and two people dying, the later might seem more acceptable to a strong libertarian. Perhaps. That's even more an indictment on libertarianism if true, but I'll let the more educated libertarians decide whether that's true or whether DPR is not a True Scotsman.
bcrescimanno 13y ago
Let the character assassination of libertarians begin. To me, that's the most discouraging thing I'm seeing coming from media coverage of Ulbricht's arrest. Yes, the site was facilitating illegal commerce; but was it immoral? Evil? These are far more difficult questions to answer specifically because people will have their own opinions. Unfortunately, this feels like the whole situation being reduced to, "those damn libertarians and their evil drugs!"
- andrewcooke 13y ago
  if it's any consolation i'm a pure bleeding heart liberal, but when i read that article and it went from "they said he couldn't be the killer" to "but little did they know, he was a libertarian" i did a double take in disbelief. that's terrible journalism.
  - jpadkins 13y ago
    it's the washington post, what do you expect? It is a platform for influence and a method to suck up to those in power.
  - bcrescimanno 13y ago
    It's the ultimate example of the two-party system's incredible stranglehold on the mainstream media. Anything outside of those two parties is treated with such derision as to suggest that they are inherently bad / wrong / evil.
- mpyne 13y ago
  This is just my humble opinion, but actual libertarianism is a self-assassinating concept as it's normally described and practiced. It's possible to think that the state has grown too powerful without subscribing to libertarian ideals, but it's pretty hard to introduce libertarian absolutes into the grainy gray of the real world without bending the principles... at which point it has stopped being libertarian. E.g., consider http://www.demos.org/blog/8/21/13/fun-times-libertarianism http://www.demos.org/blog/8/21/13/fun-times-libertarianism
ffrryuu 13y ago
And not a single banker is in jail.
jessaustin 13y ago
I have to think "Ben Tepfer", "KZ Inoue", "Ann Gokieli", and the rest of the people on the sidebar in the LinkedIn screenshot would have appreciated a more judicious crop. That's pretty unprofessional, even for the Post.

29 points by RougeFemme 13y ago

So, DPR was identified because Ross made really amateur level mistakes for a man in his position: 1. Was using the same pseudonym in several places. 2. Was advertising the Silk Road. He asked people what do they think about it: "Let me know what you guys think." [1, page 25] - this just suggests that he is connected with it. 3. Used his name (then changed to the same pseudonym he was using in other places) to ask a question about how to connect to Tor using Curl in PHP. He just could ask how to connect to a SOCKS5 server using Curl in PHP whatsoever avoiding mentioning the Tor. 4. Was not using Tor in public WiFi network at cafe. 5. Was giving interviews, long interviews. FBI could correlate his style of writing with what he writes under his own identity. 6. The most grave mistake: he posted his personal Gmail account using his pseudonym (which he was using to advertise the Silk Road) in the Forum asking for a "IT pro in the Bitcoin community" [1, page 26]. [1] - http://cryptome.org/2013/10/fbi-silk-road.pdf http://cryptome.org/2013/10/fbi-silk-road.pdf

dpapathanasiou 13y ago
Number 3 was huge because the stackoverflow answer was used on the site nearly as-is: Based on forensic analysis of the Silk Road Web Server, I know that the computer code ... includes a customized PHP strip based on 'curl' that is functionally very similar to the computer code described in Ulbricht's posting on Stack Overflow, and includes several lines of code that are identical to lines of code quoted in the posting. http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/10/02/silk_road_s_dread_pirate_ross_ulbricht_asked_stack_overflow_question_under.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/10/02/silk_road...
- gojomo 13y ago
  That code-identicality alone doesn't necessarily mean much: lots of people come later and will use the public question/answer code in their own work. (Only together with the other pseudonym correlations, it means more.)
  - dpapathanasiou 13y ago
    Right, it wasn't just the fact that the code was the same; it was that he initially posted those questions under his real name.
    - Blahah 13y ago
      Absolutely none of this is evidence of his guilt, it's all just very loose circumstantial suggestion. If this is all it takes to convince people of someone's guilt in a huge criminal case, we're all doomed.
      - mpyne 13y ago
        Circumstantial evidence has sometimes been enough for "beyond a reasonable doubt" in many cases over the past hundred years. I guess we were doomed since before then?
      - mseebach 13y ago
        "Probable cause" is all you need for a warrant. With the warrant you secure the "beyond any reasonable doubt" evidence.
      - rayiner 13y ago
        No, the financial transactions will prove his guilt. This is for finding him in the first place and getting the necessary warrants. Also, note that this evidence is for the indictment, which is what it takes to bring the charge, not a full statement of the case at trial.
cabalamat 13y ago
He certainly did make mistakes. I wonder if the next Silk Road will be open sourced? If it is, and its author becomes hors de combat, the one after him will have an easier base from which to start.
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  The actual site and system seems rather simple. The other Tor merchant sites I've seen look much better than SR. The real issue is trust (both in the site and vendors), and open source won't help there.
  - cabalamat 13y ago
    > The actual site and system seems rather simple I daresay it is. But even a simple web site hakes time and effort to build. And getting security right is always non-trivial. > The other Tor merchant sites I've seen look much better than SR You may well be right; I've never used any of them. > open source won't help there. If building a new darknet ecommerce site was a simple as: sudo apt-get install silk-road don't you think there'd be more of them? The lower the barriers to entry, the sooner someone will build something the authorities can't shut down.

gbrindisi 13y ago

I am going to be naive here but could someone explain to me how it is possible to legally dox a person this way when there still isn't a court sentence that demonstrate that this guy is indeed DPR?

TrainedMonkey 13y ago
"the man federal prosecutors say is behind the infamous contraband market Silk Road" - note how they never claim he actually is DPR. They merely "report" that federal prosecutors say that.
- Blahah 13y ago
  except in the title, where they explicitly claim he was behind Silk Road.
  - genwin 13y ago
    Good point. If he's acquitted he'll have a good case of slander.

iterationx 13y ago

He wrote an interesting manifesto on freedom, https://www.facebook.com/notes/ross-ulbricht/thoughts-on-freedom/108140845903395 https://www.facebook.com/notes/ross-ulbricht/thoughts-on-fre... unfortunately soon he will find himself locked in a cage.

mpyne 13y ago
How does his "interesting manifesto" contrast with the freedom of persons not to be murdered because they are inconvenient to his business? I don't think it's unfortunate at all that he'll be locked up. He's a murdering thug, at least twice over by his own admission.
- jsnk 13y ago
  How do you know he's a murderer already? He's not found guilty of placing a murder yet.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    > He's not found guilty of placing a murder yet. Guilt is for the legal system to decide, and I'll let it take it's course. But that doesn't require me to act as if I'm blind or can't understand evidence and reason.
- slackson 13y ago
  Wasn't the data the guy was blackmailing him with the information on sellers on the site? Between 100+ people getting 5+ year jail sentences (arbitrary numbers here) and two people dying, the later might seem more acceptable to a strong libertarian.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    > Between 100+ people getting 5+ year jail sentences (arbitrary numbers here) and two people dying, the later might seem more acceptable to a strong libertarian. Perhaps. That's even more an indictment on libertarianism if true, but I'll let the more educated libertarians decide whether that's true or whether DPR is not a True Scotsman.

bcrescimanno 13y ago

Let the character assassination of libertarians begin. To me, that's the most discouraging thing I'm seeing coming from media coverage of Ulbricht's arrest. Yes, the site was facilitating illegal commerce; but was it immoral? Evil? These are far more difficult questions to answer specifically because people will have their own opinions. Unfortunately, this feels like the whole situation being reduced to, "those damn libertarians and their evil drugs!"

andrewcooke 13y ago
if it's any consolation i'm a pure bleeding heart liberal, but when i read that article and it went from "they said he couldn't be the killer" to "but little did they know, he was a libertarian" i did a double take in disbelief. that's terrible journalism.
- jpadkins 13y ago
  it's the washington post, what do you expect? It is a platform for influence and a method to suck up to those in power.
- bcrescimanno 13y ago
  It's the ultimate example of the two-party system's incredible stranglehold on the mainstream media. Anything outside of those two parties is treated with such derision as to suggest that they are inherently bad / wrong / evil.
mpyne 13y ago
This is just my humble opinion, but actual libertarianism is a self-assassinating concept as it's normally described and practiced. It's possible to think that the state has grown too powerful without subscribing to libertarian ideals, but it's pretty hard to introduce libertarian absolutes into the grainy gray of the real world without bending the principles... at which point it has stopped being libertarian. E.g., consider http://www.demos.org/blog/8/21/13/fun-times-libertarianism http://www.demos.org/blog/8/21/13/fun-times-libertarianism

ffrryuu 13y ago

And not a single banker is in jail.

jessaustin 13y ago

I have to think "Ben Tepfer", "KZ Inoue", "Ann Gokieli", and the rest of the people on the sidebar in the LinkedIn screenshot would have appreciated a more judicious crop. That's pretty unprofessional, even for the Post.