5 ms·

'Silk Road Reloaded' Just Launched on a Network More Secret Than Tor

83 points by digisth 12y ago

higherpurpose 12y ago
Hopefully this ends up making i2p a stronger alternative to Tor, by having more crypto guys taking a look at it and finding bugs or bad designs in it.
- caractacus 12y ago
  Quite. It's been around for many years but I don't think it ever got the crypto attention that Tor has received, mostly because it was (and is) very little used. A few Russian sites toyed with using it when they started blocking sites for piracy over there but it was never adopted - too slow, not user friendlh enough.
gwern 12y ago
To put this in perspective: - 'Silk Road Reloaded' is just one of many blackmarkets; there were something like 50 openings in 2014 alone (see http://www.gwern.net/Black-market%20survival#data http://www.gwern.net/Black-market%20survival#data & https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/2r58vs/2014_in_dnms_by_the_numbers/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/2r58vs/2014... ). There is nothing new or interesting about a new blackmarket opening. - It's not even the first site to be called 'Silk Road Reloaded'. The name is also a blatant effort to fool newbies and claim unearned credit. - Heck, it's not even the first site to be run on I2P. I believe that was pioneered December 2013 by the late lamented The Marketplace (which also introduced multisig escrow). A few other markets tried afterwards, but the problem with I2P is that it's slow and doesn't seem to reliably work for users with all sorts of configs, and they all either closed quickly or set up a Tor hidden service. Thus far, the potential security advantage of I2P has not justified the hassle. And it's not like blackmarkets are often busted. - Likewise, not a pioneer in the use of Litecoin, Dogecoin, or Darkcoin. Might be for Anoncoin, but I suspect it will find like past marketplaces that there's just not a lot of interest in those by users. The problem for blackmarket sellers is not 'my coin is only pseudonymous', the problem is cashing out to fiat safely and efficiently; Bitcoin currently offers the most scope for cashing out, and it will be a long time (if ever) for those others to match it. - The admin is a raging asshole, if you check out his Reddit comments. Anyone want to trust him with a few thousand bucks in anonymous e-cash...? - On top of that, he supposedly began coding the site after SR1 was busted. How does it take over a year to set up a simple e-commerce site when almost 60 other clones were able to set up in that time? To me, that reads like it's a hobby, at best, or that he's completely incompetent, at worse. In neither case does one want to use his site.
- smtddr 12y ago
  >>- The admin is a raging [expletive], if you check out his Reddit comments. Anyone want to trust him with a few thousand bucks in anonymous e-cash...? To add to this, http://www.reddit.com/r/SilkRoad/comments/2rp0aw/silkroadreloaded_is_live_on_i2p/ http://www.reddit.com/r/SilkRoad/comments/2rp0aw/silkroadrel... , Notice that all his comments are downvoted and check out what he says. Do you agree with any of it? Here's a particularly "nice" thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/SilkRoad/comments/2rp0aw/silkroadreloaded_is_live_on_i2p/cnihlzl http://www.reddit.com/r/SilkRoad/comments/2rp0aw/silkroadrel... ...and this.. http://www.reddit.com/r/SilkRoad/comments/2rp0aw/silkroadreloaded_is_live_on_i2p/cnign0s http://www.reddit.com/r/SilkRoad/comments/2rp0aw/silkroadrel...
  - sarciszewski 12y ago
    > [expletive] Is that really necessary? Profanity is part of the English language. :\
    - Retra 12y ago
      So is euphemism-based censorship. :P
    - lkbm 12y ago
      Everything we say is part of the a language. Do you conclude that it's appropriate to say anything on here?
      - sarciszewski 12y ago
        Yep. We're mostly adults here, right?
        doubledoody 12y ago
        Even if we weren't, it's not like there are kids who don't know and use curse words.
runn1ng 12y ago
This is the good place to ask Is, in your opinion, i2p really a good alternative to tor? What I can personally think as positives/negatives: * Tor is trivial to install (just download the bundle) * Tor is working on TCP-level, i2p on IP level, which allows it to be used for BitTorrent (but it's really slow for that) * Tor is usable for "normal" web browsing, i2p not really (it has one outwards proxy that you can use but that's it) * Nobody uses i2p so it's really slow, and I am not sure if it doesn't decreases the actual anonymity
- sarciszewski 12y ago
  > Nobody uses i2p This is the problem. Anonymity networks are based on the idea of "blend in with the crowd". If there is no crowd, even an iron-clad protocol isn't much benefit. Yes, some people use i2p, but its adoption rate is much lower than Tor.
  - runn1ng 12y ago
    Yes and no i2p and Tor is different in this. Tor has relays, and there are far fewer of them than its users. I am not sure though, that's why I am asking
- acebarry 12y ago
  > Nobody uses i2p Here is an analysis that was done less than a week ago. https://thetinhat.com/articles/2015/i2p-survey.html https://thetinhat.com/articles/2015/i2p-survey.html TL;DR ~25,000 constant nodes, mostly in Russia and United States. With Russia having a lot of short lived connections.
- scottpiper 12y ago
  An important consideration when deciding if it is a good alternative is how good is it's security and ability to keep you anonymous? Since that's the whole point of using it anyway. When evaluating, it's important to look at past vulnerabilities. The following links are to posts from Exodus Intelligence about a vuln they found in i2p in July, 2014. - http://blog.exodusintel.com/2014/07/23/silverbullets_and_fairytails/ http://blog.exodusintel.com/2014/07/23/silverbullets_and_fai... - http://blog.exodusintel.com/2014/08/25/tails-from-the-cri2p/ http://blog.exodusintel.com/2014/08/25/tails-from-the-cri2p/ On the one hand you could say it is more secure now because Exodus Intelligence reviewed it, and said "I2P had many cross-site scripting vulnerabilities" of which all were fixed. Also the way in this could be exploited is a little unique (by using XSS to hit the internal I2P router configuration intranet), so it's hard to fault the developers too much for overlooking those XSS problems originally. On the other hand, there is the view that the more vulns that are found, the more likely it is there are more as yet undiscovered vulns.
anonbanker 12y ago
There is money to be made in i2p, people. Time to start creating eepsites.

83 points by digisth 12y ago

Hopefully this ends up making i2p a stronger alternative to Tor, by having more crypto guys taking a look at it and finding bugs or bad designs in it.

caractacus 12y ago
Quite. It's been around for many years but I don't think it ever got the crypto attention that Tor has received, mostly because it was (and is) very little used. A few Russian sites toyed with using it when they started blocking sites for piracy over there but it was never adopted - too slow, not user friendlh enough.

gwern 12y ago

To put this in perspective: - 'Silk Road Reloaded' is just one of many blackmarkets; there were something like 50 openings in 2014 alone (see http://www.gwern.net/Black-market%20survival#data http://www.gwern.net/Black-market%20survival#data & https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/2r58vs/2014_in_dnms_by_the_numbers/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/2r58vs/2014... ). There is nothing new or interesting about a new blackmarket opening. - It's not even the first site to be called 'Silk Road Reloaded'. The name is also a blatant effort to fool newbies and claim unearned credit. - Heck, it's not even the first site to be run on I2P. I believe that was pioneered December 2013 by the late lamented The Marketplace (which also introduced multisig escrow). A few other markets tried afterwards, but the problem with I2P is that it's slow and doesn't seem to reliably work for users with all sorts of configs, and they all either closed quickly or set up a Tor hidden service. Thus far, the potential security advantage of I2P has not justified the hassle. And it's not like blackmarkets are often busted. - Likewise, not a pioneer in the use of Litecoin, Dogecoin, or Darkcoin. Might be for Anoncoin, but I suspect it will find like past marketplaces that there's just not a lot of interest in those by users. The problem for blackmarket sellers is not 'my coin is only pseudonymous', the problem is cashing out to fiat safely and efficiently; Bitcoin currently offers the most scope for cashing out, and it will be a long time (if ever) for those others to match it. - The admin is a raging asshole, if you check out his Reddit comments. Anyone want to trust him with a few thousand bucks in anonymous e-cash...? - On top of that, he supposedly began coding the site after SR1 was busted. How does it take over a year to set up a simple e-commerce site when almost 60 other clones were able to set up in that time? To me, that reads like it's a hobby, at best, or that he's completely incompetent, at worse. In neither case does one want to use his site.

smtddr 12y ago
>>- The admin is a raging [expletive], if you check out his Reddit comments. Anyone want to trust him with a few thousand bucks in anonymous e-cash...? To add to this, http://www.reddit.com/r/SilkRoad/comments/2rp0aw/silkroadreloaded_is_live_on_i2p/ http://www.reddit.com/r/SilkRoad/comments/2rp0aw/silkroadrel... , Notice that all his comments are downvoted and check out what he says. Do you agree with any of it? Here's a particularly "nice" thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/SilkRoad/comments/2rp0aw/silkroadreloaded_is_live_on_i2p/cnihlzl http://www.reddit.com/r/SilkRoad/comments/2rp0aw/silkroadrel... ...and this.. http://www.reddit.com/r/SilkRoad/comments/2rp0aw/silkroadreloaded_is_live_on_i2p/cnign0s http://www.reddit.com/r/SilkRoad/comments/2rp0aw/silkroadrel...
- sarciszewski 12y ago
  > [expletive] Is that really necessary? Profanity is part of the English language. :\
  - Retra 12y ago
    So is euphemism-based censorship. :P
  - lkbm 12y ago
    Everything we say is part of the a language. Do you conclude that it's appropriate to say anything on here?
    - sarciszewski 12y ago
      Yep. We're mostly adults here, right?
      - doubledoody 12y ago
        Even if we weren't, it's not like there are kids who don't know and use curse words.

runn1ng 12y ago

This is the good place to ask Is, in your opinion, i2p really a good alternative to tor? What I can personally think as positives/negatives: * Tor is trivial to install (just download the bundle) * Tor is working on TCP-level, i2p on IP level, which allows it to be used for BitTorrent (but it's really slow for that) * Tor is usable for "normal" web browsing, i2p not really (it has one outwards proxy that you can use but that's it) * Nobody uses i2p so it's really slow, and I am not sure if it doesn't decreases the actual anonymity

sarciszewski 12y ago
> Nobody uses i2p This is the problem. Anonymity networks are based on the idea of "blend in with the crowd". If there is no crowd, even an iron-clad protocol isn't much benefit. Yes, some people use i2p, but its adoption rate is much lower than Tor.
- runn1ng 12y ago
  Yes and no i2p and Tor is different in this. Tor has relays, and there are far fewer of them than its users. I am not sure though, that's why I am asking
acebarry 12y ago
> Nobody uses i2p Here is an analysis that was done less than a week ago. https://thetinhat.com/articles/2015/i2p-survey.html https://thetinhat.com/articles/2015/i2p-survey.html TL;DR ~25,000 constant nodes, mostly in Russia and United States. With Russia having a lot of short lived connections.
scottpiper 12y ago
An important consideration when deciding if it is a good alternative is how good is it's security and ability to keep you anonymous? Since that's the whole point of using it anyway. When evaluating, it's important to look at past vulnerabilities. The following links are to posts from Exodus Intelligence about a vuln they found in i2p in July, 2014. - http://blog.exodusintel.com/2014/07/23/silverbullets_and_fairytails/ http://blog.exodusintel.com/2014/07/23/silverbullets_and_fai... - http://blog.exodusintel.com/2014/08/25/tails-from-the-cri2p/ http://blog.exodusintel.com/2014/08/25/tails-from-the-cri2p/ On the one hand you could say it is more secure now because Exodus Intelligence reviewed it, and said "I2P had many cross-site scripting vulnerabilities" of which all were fixed. Also the way in this could be exploited is a little unique (by using XSS to hit the internal I2P router configuration intranet), so it's hard to fault the developers too much for overlooking those XSS problems originally. On the other hand, there is the view that the more vulns that are found, the more likely it is there are more as yet undiscovered vulns.

anonbanker 12y ago

There is money to be made in i2p, people. Time to start creating eepsites.