19 ms·

The Amazons of the dark net

108 points by boh 12y ago

Hermel 12y ago
This is about Silk Road et al. What about the AWS of the dark net? Does that exist?
- pquerna 12y ago
  Well, I don't know about the 'dark' side, but I know @kordless has been hacking on StackMonkey: https://www.stackmonkey.com/ https://www.stackmonkey.com/ Which lets you buy compute instances anonymously using BitCoin.
  - dublinben 12y ago
    >anonymously using BitCoin and a Google account. I don't think anyone would consider using this provider for a hidden service on Tor.
    - Sambdala 12y ago
      You don't appear to need an account to launch instances.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 12y ago
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      - kordless 12y ago
        That is correct. The pool simply aggregates things for searching. That'll go away eventually when we get a blockchain up for it.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
    - kordless 12y ago
      To clarify, you need a Google account for providing service to the network, but it's not required for starting instances. Instance starts also support dynamic callbacks, so you can bounce the start off StackMonkey to another instance that provides credentials and provisioning info. There's a security brief at the bottom of the readme: https://github.com/StackMonkey/utter-va#security https://github.com/StackMonkey/utter-va#security. The pool is intended to function as an aggregation point for the instances. There should not be a way for a bad actor to use the pool to affect appliances or compromise instances. And the code is Open Source under the MIT license, as all infrastructure code should be. If you find an issue, please open a ticket: https://github.com/StackMonkey/utter-pool/issues https://github.com/StackMonkey/utter-pool/issues
      - mintplant 12y ago
        > There should not be a way for a bad actor to use the pool to affect appliances or compromise instances. How do you accomplish this?
        kordless 12y ago
        Appliances create addresses and map them to instance templates. Appliances send those mappings to the pool where they are placed in an NDB database used for searching. Users can search or have prior knowledge of an address to get instance addresses. Appliances listen to the blockchain for payments sent to the address and make instance starts based on those payments. Before an instance is started, the pool may send data to the appliance to effect provisioning tasks. Alternately, a callback URL can be returned, which is then used to 'bounce' the provisioning request to a third party site. Note the pool never sends a start request directly to an appliance. Instances 'time out' when they run out of time, but that could also be done using another payment to another address. Provisioning requests are probably the weakest link currently, but we have plans for dealing with that shortly.
flatline 12y ago
Perhaps the most interesting point is in the last paragraph: > Moreover, the deep web’s denizens will continue to adapt. Jamie Bartlett, author of “The Dark Net”, predicts: “The future of these markets is not centralised sites like Silk Road 2.0, but sites where…listings, messaging, payment and feedback are all separated, controlled by no central party”—and thus impossible to close. I know some work along these lines has been started with e.g. OpenBazaar, but it may be a while before they are seen in any large scale activities - maybe another five years still until they are at all commonplace, or even available to the general public.
- participle 12y ago
  The Tor version of Openbazaar is available as of a few days ago. You can download it here. https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenBazaar/comments/2ko33b/help_needed_please_test_new_tor_support/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenBazaar/comments/2ko33b/help_nee... At this point it is stable and can be used to run a store via Tor. The last of the core system (arbitration and notary) will be completed by the end of the year.
barking 12y ago
I'm amazed that buyers will trust anonymous online drug dealers with their address. Isn't that what happens?
- corobo 12y ago
  Yes but consider the pre-tech way is that they anonymously (at least for the first few times) visit your address personally or you visit theirs Easily more risky
  - ripb 12y ago
    That will depend on the drug. If you're talking about heroin or crack addicts who've to essentially approach random people they don't know, then yes there is obviously risk associated with it. However when you're talking about recreational / party drugs like marijuana, MDMA, etc., these come through large distribution networks with an inherent level of trust and common cause to minimize risk inbuilt. If you, for example, wanted to get some marijuana, you'd probably go to a friend that you know smokes it, because he clearly has a source for it. You'll go to someone you feel you can place some level of trust and confidence in, and likewise they will go to, or direct you toward, someone they place a level of trust and confidence in. Every actor in that scenario is seeking to minimize their risk. The consumer will use caution in who they deal with and likewise the middlemen or distributors will use caution in who they deal with. This will be underlined by the fact that low level recreational drugs dealing isn't a massively profitable activity. Only further up the distribution chain, far away from the end user, will profit rise and with it, risk. I personally cannot fathom buying drugs from someone totally unconnected online. The odds of you ending up buying drugs from a police officer when you go to a friend of a friend, versus when you're buying them from a faceless entity online are incredibly different.
    - corobo 12y ago
      You do make excellent points on the more recreational side of things. To be honest I wasn't really thinking small amounts - I had an assumption that people were buying in wholesale amounts on Silk Road and the likes
101914 12y ago
"THE first ever e-commerce transaction..." Is there a missing footnote?
- jsaxton86 12y ago
  According to The Guardian[1]: In John Markoff 's 2005 book What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (even the book's title is from a hoary old Jefferson Airplane track) he reveals that the world's first online transaction was a drug deal: In 1971 or 1972, Stanford students using Arpanet accounts at Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory engaged in a commercial transaction with their counterparts at Massachussetts Institute of Technology. Before Amazon, before eBay, the seminal act of e-commerce was a drug deal. The students used the network to quietly arrange the sale of an undetermined amount of marijuana. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/apr/19/online-high-net-drugs-deal http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/apr/19/online-high-n...
- nmjohn 12y ago
  Is a footnote needed for everything? From the author's perspective, I think it was assumed that it is well enough known to not need a citation. And if someone didn't know it, googling "first ecommerce transaction" brings up multiple hits on the first page confirming it.
deleted 12y ago
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hristov 12y ago
It is rather naive for this writer to assume that things like online reviews will work or continue to work for these illegal sites. Why do they believe that illegal drug sites will have honest reviews when even yelp, which is supposed to be completely legal and reviews completely legal businesses has obviously manipulated reviews. Of course people will eventually start padding their ratings, and the websites themselves will start manipulating ratings. So this is not some panacea for getting higher quality drugs. It is not even something that will ensure your safety from the police. As I have mentioned before, the police can get you online the way they usually get you -- by having an undercover police agent pretend to be the seller. In fact it would be much cheaper and more effective for the police to collect addresses from an illegal drugs site than the dangerous and tricky business of using undercover agents on the street. I think the economist is being very disingenuous by cheerleading for these online sites. These are not safer from police or drug purity standpoint.
- Renaud 12y ago
  Regarding the reviews, I haven't been on these sites but I suppose that they would only allow buyers to make a review. Even if sellers cheat and create fake transactions to be allowed a review, people who are not happy with the service will still leave a bad review. So because reviews are not under the control of the seller, there is a high incentive for them to be honest. Don't think of it as yelp, think of it as Alibaba/AliExpress. Sellers can always cheat, but it's harder and the risks of being booted off the site if you are a crappy vendor are higher as well.
- gwern 12y ago
  > It is rather naive for this writer to assume that things like online reviews will work or continue to work for these illegal sites. Why do they believe that illegal drug sites will have honest reviews It is rather naive to call that 'rather naive' given that the black-markets have functioned well since January 2011 (so, coming up on 4 years soon). I don't think it would take scammers 4 years to realize that reviews can be faked. > when even yelp, which is supposed to be completely legal and reviews completely legal businesses has obviously manipulated reviews. Yelp doesn't control purchases of services and take commissions and only let buyers review, so it's in a different position from the operators of a black-market. > As I have mentioned before, the police can get you online the way they usually get you -- by having an undercover police agent pretend to be the seller. So why don't they? Why are they ignoring the infallible wisdom of the great hristov?
theicon 12y ago
Willful blindness, I must say.

108 points by boh 12y ago

Hermel 12y ago

This is about Silk Road et al. What about the AWS of the dark net? Does that exist?

pquerna 12y ago
Well, I don't know about the 'dark' side, but I know @kordless has been hacking on StackMonkey: https://www.stackmonkey.com/ https://www.stackmonkey.com/ Which lets you buy compute instances anonymously using BitCoin.
- dublinben 12y ago
  >anonymously using BitCoin and a Google account. I don't think anyone would consider using this provider for a hidden service on Tor.
  - Sambdala 12y ago
    You don't appear to need an account to launch instances.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - kordless 12y ago
      That is correct. The pool simply aggregates things for searching. That'll go away eventually when we get a blockchain up for it.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  - kordless 12y ago
    To clarify, you need a Google account for providing service to the network, but it's not required for starting instances. Instance starts also support dynamic callbacks, so you can bounce the start off StackMonkey to another instance that provides credentials and provisioning info. There's a security brief at the bottom of the readme: https://github.com/StackMonkey/utter-va#security https://github.com/StackMonkey/utter-va#security. The pool is intended to function as an aggregation point for the instances. There should not be a way for a bad actor to use the pool to affect appliances or compromise instances. And the code is Open Source under the MIT license, as all infrastructure code should be. If you find an issue, please open a ticket: https://github.com/StackMonkey/utter-pool/issues https://github.com/StackMonkey/utter-pool/issues
    - mintplant 12y ago
      > There should not be a way for a bad actor to use the pool to affect appliances or compromise instances. How do you accomplish this?
      - kordless 12y ago
        Appliances create addresses and map them to instance templates. Appliances send those mappings to the pool where they are placed in an NDB database used for searching. Users can search or have prior knowledge of an address to get instance addresses. Appliances listen to the blockchain for payments sent to the address and make instance starts based on those payments. Before an instance is started, the pool may send data to the appliance to effect provisioning tasks. Alternately, a callback URL can be returned, which is then used to 'bounce' the provisioning request to a third party site. Note the pool never sends a start request directly to an appliance. Instances 'time out' when they run out of time, but that could also be done using another payment to another address. Provisioning requests are probably the weakest link currently, but we have plans for dealing with that shortly.

flatline 12y ago

Perhaps the most interesting point is in the last paragraph: > Moreover, the deep web’s denizens will continue to adapt. Jamie Bartlett, author of “The Dark Net”, predicts: “The future of these markets is not centralised sites like Silk Road 2.0, but sites where…listings, messaging, payment and feedback are all separated, controlled by no central party”—and thus impossible to close. I know some work along these lines has been started with e.g. OpenBazaar, but it may be a while before they are seen in any large scale activities - maybe another five years still until they are at all commonplace, or even available to the general public.

participle 12y ago
The Tor version of Openbazaar is available as of a few days ago. You can download it here. https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenBazaar/comments/2ko33b/help_needed_please_test_new_tor_support/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenBazaar/comments/2ko33b/help_nee... At this point it is stable and can be used to run a store via Tor. The last of the core system (arbitration and notary) will be completed by the end of the year.

barking 12y ago

I'm amazed that buyers will trust anonymous online drug dealers with their address. Isn't that what happens?

corobo 12y ago
Yes but consider the pre-tech way is that they anonymously (at least for the first few times) visit your address personally or you visit theirs Easily more risky
- ripb 12y ago
  That will depend on the drug. If you're talking about heroin or crack addicts who've to essentially approach random people they don't know, then yes there is obviously risk associated with it. However when you're talking about recreational / party drugs like marijuana, MDMA, etc., these come through large distribution networks with an inherent level of trust and common cause to minimize risk inbuilt. If you, for example, wanted to get some marijuana, you'd probably go to a friend that you know smokes it, because he clearly has a source for it. You'll go to someone you feel you can place some level of trust and confidence in, and likewise they will go to, or direct you toward, someone they place a level of trust and confidence in. Every actor in that scenario is seeking to minimize their risk. The consumer will use caution in who they deal with and likewise the middlemen or distributors will use caution in who they deal with. This will be underlined by the fact that low level recreational drugs dealing isn't a massively profitable activity. Only further up the distribution chain, far away from the end user, will profit rise and with it, risk. I personally cannot fathom buying drugs from someone totally unconnected online. The odds of you ending up buying drugs from a police officer when you go to a friend of a friend, versus when you're buying them from a faceless entity online are incredibly different.
  - corobo 12y ago
    You do make excellent points on the more recreational side of things. To be honest I wasn't really thinking small amounts - I had an assumption that people were buying in wholesale amounts on Silk Road and the likes

101914 12y ago

"THE first ever e-commerce transaction..." Is there a missing footnote?

jsaxton86 12y ago
According to The Guardian[1]: In John Markoff 's 2005 book What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (even the book's title is from a hoary old Jefferson Airplane track) he reveals that the world's first online transaction was a drug deal: In 1971 or 1972, Stanford students using Arpanet accounts at Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory engaged in a commercial transaction with their counterparts at Massachussetts Institute of Technology. Before Amazon, before eBay, the seminal act of e-commerce was a drug deal. The students used the network to quietly arrange the sale of an undetermined amount of marijuana. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/apr/19/online-high-net-drugs-deal http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/apr/19/online-high-n...
nmjohn 12y ago
Is a footnote needed for everything? From the author's perspective, I think it was assumed that it is well enough known to not need a citation. And if someone didn't know it, googling "first ecommerce transaction" brings up multiple hits on the first page confirming it.

deleted 12y ago

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deleted 12y ago

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hristov 12y ago

It is rather naive for this writer to assume that things like online reviews will work or continue to work for these illegal sites. Why do they believe that illegal drug sites will have honest reviews when even yelp, which is supposed to be completely legal and reviews completely legal businesses has obviously manipulated reviews. Of course people will eventually start padding their ratings, and the websites themselves will start manipulating ratings. So this is not some panacea for getting higher quality drugs. It is not even something that will ensure your safety from the police. As I have mentioned before, the police can get you online the way they usually get you -- by having an undercover police agent pretend to be the seller. In fact it would be much cheaper and more effective for the police to collect addresses from an illegal drugs site than the dangerous and tricky business of using undercover agents on the street. I think the economist is being very disingenuous by cheerleading for these online sites. These are not safer from police or drug purity standpoint.

Renaud 12y ago
Regarding the reviews, I haven't been on these sites but I suppose that they would only allow buyers to make a review. Even if sellers cheat and create fake transactions to be allowed a review, people who are not happy with the service will still leave a bad review. So because reviews are not under the control of the seller, there is a high incentive for them to be honest. Don't think of it as yelp, think of it as Alibaba/AliExpress. Sellers can always cheat, but it's harder and the risks of being booted off the site if you are a crappy vendor are higher as well.
gwern 12y ago
> It is rather naive for this writer to assume that things like online reviews will work or continue to work for these illegal sites. Why do they believe that illegal drug sites will have honest reviews It is rather naive to call that 'rather naive' given that the black-markets have functioned well since January 2011 (so, coming up on 4 years soon). I don't think it would take scammers 4 years to realize that reviews can be faked. > when even yelp, which is supposed to be completely legal and reviews completely legal businesses has obviously manipulated reviews. Yelp doesn't control purchases of services and take commissions and only let buyers review, so it's in a different position from the operators of a black-market. > As I have mentioned before, the police can get you online the way they usually get you -- by having an undercover police agent pretend to be the seller. So why don't they? Why are they ignoring the infallible wisdom of the great hristov?

theicon 12y ago

Willful blindness, I must say.