6 ms·

Feds say Silk Road suspect’s computer shows he (thought he) plotted 6 murders

37 points by llambda 13y ago

nwh 13y ago
He kept a written journal of this stuff? Truly must not have expected to be caught, I can't imagine what world he was in inside his head to have believed that. Given the status of the website, it was only going to be a matter of time. Fairly convincing looking fake Australian license though, wish there was a better photo of it.
- Pheno 13y ago
  I can't get over how he wasn't using full disk encryption.
  - anaphor 13y ago
    The way I see it there are a few possibilities: 1) He isn't the real DPR 2) He is the real DPR, but he's extremely inept and didn't get caught before due to dumb luck 3) He isn't the original DPR, but an inept person who took over to take the fall for the original DPR 4) He wanted to get caught?
    - dopamean 13y ago
      5) Hubris.
    - benologist 13y ago
      5) none of us are as smart as we think we are.
      - sliverstorm 13y ago
        Corollary: The FBI is sharper than we lead ourselves to believe. (Not to say they are gods among men, but if you believe The Internet, the FBI couldn't sleuth their way out of a wet paper bag)
        krapp 13y ago
        The Internet watches too much television.
    - nwh 13y ago
      There's nothing to suggest that anybody apart from him ever ran the site. The screw ups on StackOverflow and Bitcointalk point to him and nobody else. He's just someone who totally didn't prepare for his adversaries, who ultimately didn't need to go to any great lengths to unmask him. I'm surprised nobody in the general public managed to do it, quite honestly. Just not as clever as he thought he was being, essentially.
      - hmsimha 13y ago
        > The screw ups on StackOverflow and Bitcointalk point to him and nobody else. Ah, so the original DPR is a true master then :P
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      didn't get caught before due to dumb luck There isn't really much "before". The site was only up for about 2.5 years before shutdown, and the FBI started building a case back in, what, May? June?
    - JshWright 13y ago
      > 3) He isn't the original DPR, but an inept person who took over to take the fall for the original DPR The real Roberts has been retired fifteen years and living like a king in Patagonia.
  - evilrevolution 13y ago
    If he was they'd either leave the computer on and retrieve the key out of the ram, or he'd hand it over within a week of custody.
  - berberous 13y ago
    He probably did. The FBI deliberately waited until he was using his laptop at the library, then tackled him while the computer was still logged on.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  I can't imagine what world he was in inside his head Perhaps the world of in for a penny, in for a pound
mpyne 13y ago
I'm extremely interested in who this 'redandwhite' guy is. It's still unclear if the murders even occurred, but if no one got killed then this might be one of the most effective cons (against DPR) I've ever seen.
- consonants 13y ago
  It's the feds. They faked the hit.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    That was the first hit, against chronicpain/flush. I'm referring to the other 5 hits from the Hell's Angel. The Feds aren't sure who he is or whether the hits even happened, they only know that DPR released payment for them so presumably the proof was acceptable to DPR.
- coldtea 13y ago
  Isn't it obvious it was the friendlychemist? friendlychemist: "Hey, I need $500.000 I owe to some bad guys. Give it to me or I'll expose you." silkroadguy: "Sure, can you get me in contact with the guys that you owe money to, first?" (He ...really expects somebody that owes money to bad guys will give their address to someone he tries to blackmail????) "redandwhite": "Hello, I'm the guy friendlychemist owes money to. Want me to kill him? I can do it for, say, $500.000". silkroadguy: "Seems legit. Go ahead". "readandwhite": "Done! Here's a photo of me^H^H him dead." silkroadguy: "Great! Here's the money!". (time passes) "readandwhite": "Hey, I found somebody else who steals from you. Four of them? Want me to kill 'em? Wire some bitcoins". silkroadguy: "Sure, wiring!". I mean, is he dumb or what?
  - mpyne 13y ago
    That does seem the most likely explanation, yes.
veb 13y ago
From the comments (Silk Road Tales) http://antilop.cc/sr/ http://antilop.cc/sr/
shill 13y ago
The link from his bookmarks bar. http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/security-it/why-hackers-should-be-afraid-of-how-they-write-20130116-2csdo.html http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/security-it/why-hackers-should-...
- epynonymous 13y ago
  leet!
scenicBulimic 13y ago
So, as an armchair juror, 3 enourmous questions spring to mind: 1. Why would a man, who allegedly built an extremely profitable empire using robust cryptographic software, not have enough expertise to employ powerful encypted countermeasures on his personal machine? Why wasn't his hard drive encrypted? Why were there no plans to erase and destroy data at a moment's notice, in the event that he gets arrested? Are we expected to believe that his meticulous use of crypto-currency and onion routing go hand in hand with maintaining a silly plain text journal of his comings and goings? That he was simply naive to the idea that his local storage devices should not be a meticulously guarded has his network presence? 2. Are screenshots honestly a valid form of evidence? Consider that there's a distinct lack of any sort of chain-of-custody for such evidence, and the fact that it's trivial to fabricate screenshots, why should I believe that any give screenshot can be regarded as authentic evidence? 3. Screenshots aside, how can we honestly buy into any digital evidence presented to us, when there's no assured certainty to its integrity? Consider that one cannot even trust plaintext HTTP data to be safe from corruption by MITM attacks. Given that large quantities of digital evidence can be manufactured programatically, with relative ease, given the proper expertise, how are we to trust a large volume of digital data as anything more than artificially produced bits and bytes spat out by a machine? Logs? Logs, you say? Who maintained these logs? What program created these logs? And if I can possibly capture and replay a remote desktop session, doesn't it stand to reason that I might be able to spice things up, and insert salacious tidbits, and then programatically produce screenshots at will? So what if they have gigabytes of data demonstrating such and such? What is the true measure of authenticity when confronted by the fact that it's still just faceless bytes sitting on a disk?
- maxerickson 13y ago
  It is just like any evidence. You look at the people that are certifying it and decide if it is plausible that they are all lying. (aimed mostly at 3.)
- loceng 13y ago
  One very plausible answer is the government wanted to demonize him so there'd be less of an uproar of support against their actions.
Apane 13y ago
Seems like a scum bag to me.
brianpgordon 13y ago
> “Who he’s been portrayed as is so not him, it’s absurd,” Lyn Ulbricht told Forbes. “He’s one of the best people I know.” Said every mother ever.
npb32 13y ago
This is like a movie
epynonymous 13y ago
most of the comments tend to say that he was stupid, but in some respects, i think the guy was quite bold and somewhat intelligent if he was able to roll something up this large over that long of a time period even if what he was doing was highly illegal. sure he could have been smarter about some things, but honestly, the fact that he got this far, this fast means that he was an enterprising individual, just on the wrong track.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

37 points by llambda 13y ago

nwh 13y ago

He kept a written journal of this stuff? Truly must not have expected to be caught, I can't imagine what world he was in inside his head to have believed that. Given the status of the website, it was only going to be a matter of time. Fairly convincing looking fake Australian license though, wish there was a better photo of it.

Pheno 13y ago
I can't get over how he wasn't using full disk encryption.
- anaphor 13y ago
  The way I see it there are a few possibilities: 1) He isn't the real DPR 2) He is the real DPR, but he's extremely inept and didn't get caught before due to dumb luck 3) He isn't the original DPR, but an inept person who took over to take the fall for the original DPR 4) He wanted to get caught?
  - dopamean 13y ago
    5) Hubris.
  - benologist 13y ago
    5) none of us are as smart as we think we are.
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      Corollary: The FBI is sharper than we lead ourselves to believe. (Not to say they are gods among men, but if you believe The Internet, the FBI couldn't sleuth their way out of a wet paper bag)
      - krapp 13y ago
        The Internet watches too much television.
  - nwh 13y ago
    There's nothing to suggest that anybody apart from him ever ran the site. The screw ups on StackOverflow and Bitcointalk point to him and nobody else. He's just someone who totally didn't prepare for his adversaries, who ultimately didn't need to go to any great lengths to unmask him. I'm surprised nobody in the general public managed to do it, quite honestly. Just not as clever as he thought he was being, essentially.
    - hmsimha 13y ago
      > The screw ups on StackOverflow and Bitcointalk point to him and nobody else. Ah, so the original DPR is a true master then :P
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    didn't get caught before due to dumb luck There isn't really much "before". The site was only up for about 2.5 years before shutdown, and the FBI started building a case back in, what, May? June?
  - JshWright 13y ago
    > 3) He isn't the original DPR, but an inept person who took over to take the fall for the original DPR The real Roberts has been retired fifteen years and living like a king in Patagonia.
- evilrevolution 13y ago
  If he was they'd either leave the computer on and retrieve the key out of the ram, or he'd hand it over within a week of custody.
- berberous 13y ago
  He probably did. The FBI deliberately waited until he was using his laptop at the library, then tackled him while the computer was still logged on.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
sliverstorm 13y ago
I can't imagine what world he was in inside his head Perhaps the world of in for a penny, in for a pound

mpyne 13y ago

I'm extremely interested in who this 'redandwhite' guy is. It's still unclear if the murders even occurred, but if no one got killed then this might be one of the most effective cons (against DPR) I've ever seen.

consonants 13y ago
It's the feds. They faked the hit.
- mpyne 13y ago
  That was the first hit, against chronicpain/flush. I'm referring to the other 5 hits from the Hell's Angel. The Feds aren't sure who he is or whether the hits even happened, they only know that DPR released payment for them so presumably the proof was acceptable to DPR.
coldtea 13y ago
Isn't it obvious it was the friendlychemist? friendlychemist: "Hey, I need $500.000 I owe to some bad guys. Give it to me or I'll expose you." silkroadguy: "Sure, can you get me in contact with the guys that you owe money to, first?" (He ...really expects somebody that owes money to bad guys will give their address to someone he tries to blackmail????) "redandwhite": "Hello, I'm the guy friendlychemist owes money to. Want me to kill him? I can do it for, say, $500.000". silkroadguy: "Seems legit. Go ahead". "readandwhite": "Done! Here's a photo of me^H^H him dead." silkroadguy: "Great! Here's the money!". (time passes) "readandwhite": "Hey, I found somebody else who steals from you. Four of them? Want me to kill 'em? Wire some bitcoins". silkroadguy: "Sure, wiring!". I mean, is he dumb or what?
- mpyne 13y ago
  That does seem the most likely explanation, yes.

veb 13y ago

From the comments (Silk Road Tales) http://antilop.cc/sr/ http://antilop.cc/sr/

shill 13y ago

The link from his bookmarks bar. http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/security-it/why-hackers-should-be-afraid-of-how-they-write-20130116-2csdo.html http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/security-it/why-hackers-should-...

epynonymous 13y ago
leet!

scenicBulimic 13y ago

So, as an armchair juror, 3 enourmous questions spring to mind: 1. Why would a man, who allegedly built an extremely profitable empire using robust cryptographic software, not have enough expertise to employ powerful encypted countermeasures on his personal machine? Why wasn't his hard drive encrypted? Why were there no plans to erase and destroy data at a moment's notice, in the event that he gets arrested? Are we expected to believe that his meticulous use of crypto-currency and onion routing go hand in hand with maintaining a silly plain text journal of his comings and goings? That he was simply naive to the idea that his local storage devices should not be a meticulously guarded has his network presence? 2. Are screenshots honestly a valid form of evidence? Consider that there's a distinct lack of any sort of chain-of-custody for such evidence, and the fact that it's trivial to fabricate screenshots, why should I believe that any give screenshot can be regarded as authentic evidence? 3. Screenshots aside, how can we honestly buy into any digital evidence presented to us, when there's no assured certainty to its integrity? Consider that one cannot even trust plaintext HTTP data to be safe from corruption by MITM attacks. Given that large quantities of digital evidence can be manufactured programatically, with relative ease, given the proper expertise, how are we to trust a large volume of digital data as anything more than artificially produced bits and bytes spat out by a machine? Logs? Logs, you say? Who maintained these logs? What program created these logs? And if I can possibly capture and replay a remote desktop session, doesn't it stand to reason that I might be able to spice things up, and insert salacious tidbits, and then programatically produce screenshots at will? So what if they have gigabytes of data demonstrating such and such? What is the true measure of authenticity when confronted by the fact that it's still just faceless bytes sitting on a disk?

maxerickson 13y ago
It is just like any evidence. You look at the people that are certifying it and decide if it is plausible that they are all lying. (aimed mostly at 3.)
loceng 13y ago
One very plausible answer is the government wanted to demonize him so there'd be less of an uproar of support against their actions.

Apane 13y ago

Seems like a scum bag to me.

brianpgordon 13y ago

> “Who he’s been portrayed as is so not him, it’s absurd,” Lyn Ulbricht told Forbes. “He’s one of the best people I know.” Said every mother ever.

npb32 13y ago

This is like a movie

epynonymous 13y ago

most of the comments tend to say that he was stupid, but in some respects, i think the guy was quite bold and somewhat intelligent if he was able to roll something up this large over that long of a time period even if what he was doing was highly illegal. sure he could have been smarter about some things, but honestly, the fact that he got this far, this fast means that he was an enterprising individual, just on the wrong track.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]