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The Dark Web’s Top Drug Market, Evolution, Just Vanished
- nmc 12y agoRecent HN posts of related Reddit comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224517 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224517 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9225154 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9225154
- joeyspn 12y agoAaaand its gone... and I bet with gazillions of the user's bitcoins (this is becoming a classic)
- ChuckMcM 12y agoAlthough it takes a certain amount of guts to steal from drug dealers. They don't generally bother with suing you in court to recover their funds :-)
- MichaelGG 12y agoIf "drug dealers" can find you, then so can LE. If LE can find you, you're cooked already and shouldn't be playing.
- joeyspn 12y agoYes, definitely it takes a big pair... I reckon the admins of these sites must be the same kind of people that don't really care stealing from anybody, even big banks. What I don't understand is why after so many thefts the users (sellers and buyers) still trust this kind of underground services without demanding additional security measures like multi-signature wallets.
- pavel_lishin 12y agoI don't understand why vendors would keep a lot of bitcoins on the site, instead of withdrawing them as quickly as possible. This guy apparently had 300BTC/$85k on there! http://np.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/2zeuxo/complaintwarning_evolution_admins_exit_scamming/cpijggd?context=4 http://np.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/2zeuxo/compla...
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- codesuela 12y agoEscrow, funds are only released once the buyer confirms that he received the shipment. If you have a ton of outstanding orders, you are going to have a lot of funds frozen in escrow.
- ForHackernews 12y agoI thought the whole point of bitcoin was that it was peer-to-peer with no chargebacks or centralized middlemen?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- Karunamon 12y agoA side benefit, but I wouldn't say the whole point. There are some cases where middlemen are necessary - the difference being that they're a lot more avoidable with BTC than they are in meatspace. (Credit cards, authorities who rob people carrying large amounts of cash, and so on.)
- lhc- 12y agoI'm not positive that bitcoins offer much more protection from robbery than cash, given the situation here.
- aeykie 12y agoThey offered protection, though didn't they? Evolution had multiescrow, they wouldn't have gotten those funds would they have?
- res0nat0r 12y agoI'd much rather have someone charge up fraudulent charges on my credit card than Bitcoin, I would much more likely be getting that money back and letting the CC fraud department deal with it. That guarantee is a major selling point of why so many people use credit cards in the first place.
- ams6110 12y ago"You knew what I was when you picked me up," said the snake as it slithered away.
- joshstrange 12y agoFor those not getting the reference http://www.gballard.net/lifes_lessons/girl_rattlesnake/ http://www.gballard.net/lifes_lessons/girl_rattlesnake/
- anigbrowl 12y agoWhile I understand the point of the fable, I don't get this version at all. Snakes don't rely on lures or deception; they sneak up on their small prey and try to keep out of the way of larger animals. I feel particularly well disposed towards rattlesnakes because they advertise that they don't want to be messed with. Rather like sharks, I feel like hey get a bad rap. Of course the author has rather obvious religious sensibilities, so perhaps that influences his perspective.
- thaumasiotes 12y agoDon't be fooled; that story is many centuries old. Snakes are traditionally villainous because they can kill you; I doubt there was ever more to it. Fun fact: monkeys have been observed to scream in fear on seeing a piece of rubber hose lying on the ground. There are good historical reasons for people to hate snakes.
- walshemj 12y agoSome of course prefer the Al Willson musical version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_ZBqpEUbik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_ZBqpEUbik Clasic Northern Soul
- ProAm 12y agoOr the Scorpion and the Frog [1] [1] http://www.aesopfables.com/cgi/aesop1.cgi?4&TheScorpionandtheFrog http://www.aesopfables.com/cgi/aesop1.cgi?4&TheScorpionandth...
- ForHackernews 12y agohttp://www.reddit.com/r/sorryforyourloss http://www.reddit.com/r/sorryforyourloss
- amyjess 12y agoThere are people on reddit raising funds to doxx the people who ran Evolution. Jesus... a whole lot of shadowbans are going to happen once the admins wake up. Maybe even some subreddit bans.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- at-fates-hands 12y agoI also read today there is a bitcoin wallet floating out there with something like 400K bitcoins in it that people think might be the stolen Evolution funds.
- gwern 12y agoNothing's going to happen. This happens every time a big market like Sheep goes down - a lot of people who knew better start talking big online and huffing and puffing and bluffing, along with the occasional scam 'send me BTC and I'll track down the admins!'
- pakled_engineer 12y agoBrokering narcotics and everything else to the entire world is an unsustainable business you have no safe country to flee to if caught or outed. Surprised these black markets don't just focus on one foreign market from their stronghold in Abkhazia or something.
- emodendroket 12y agoJudging by the DPR trial these guys are not generally criminal masterminds.
- nyolfen 12y agosetting up with iranian hosting might be a plausible way to go about it
- meepmorp 12y agoAnd a great way to get yourself some terrorism related charges when you inevitably fuck up and leak identifying information.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- at-fates-hands 12y ago"NSWGreat described confronting Evolution’s two pseudonymous owners, Verto and Kimble, who he or she says then admitted they were closing the market and stealing its funds. “I am so sorry, but Verto and Kimble have f–ked us all." With no chat logs, all we go by is this guy's word? What are the odds he was in on the heist? Also, this reminds me of when Max Butler did a brute force take over of all the carders markets and then created his own "super carders forum" by hacking in and then wiping their databases and then repointing their domains to his. While this is probably not in the realm of possibilities, if this site does come back, people had better be very, very weary of who's actually running it. Lessons learned and all that jazz I suppose.
- gwern 12y ago> With no chat logs, all we go by is this guy's word? You mean, besides the market & forum being down since 8PM yesterday, withdrawals failing since at least Saturday, no communication from the operators, at least one other employee saying it's an exit scam, and blockchain movements of large amounts of funds? > What are the odds he was in on the heist? We can't rule out a scenario like NSWGreat expected to receive a cut, but it's clear that when he went public, he helped some people save money by not continuing to deposit funds.
- antihero 12y agoAlso if people buy it, this guy has free reign to pick any two people on the planet that he doesn't like and effectively end their lives.
- tlrobinson 12y agoSo why haven't markets that utilize Bitcoin escrow transactions taken off yet?
- Igglyboo 12y agoEvolution did use escrow, except that they were the middle man between buyer and seller. Even with escrow you still have to put your trust in someone else.
- tlrobinson 12y agoEven with escrow you still have to put your trust in someone else. Not with Bitcoin. With multi-sig transactions you don't have to trust the escrow agent to not steal your money (assuming you're confident the escrow agent is not also the other party in the transaction): https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts#Example_2:_Escrow_and_dispute_mediation https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts#Example_2:_Escrow_and_d... As dshankar pointed out, Evolution supported these types of transactions but they were not widely used, presumably because they are more difficult than normal transactions.
- pakled_engineer 12y agoThey had some scheme where you had to give them all your coins first then they used their own software to gen multi-sig http://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/24vio2/z/chcx3t7 http://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/24vio2/z/chc... Probably because no bitcoin clients that aren't 3rd party (blockchain.info wallets) offer multi sig in an easy to use UI so nobody could figure it out and just trusted the admins of Evo.
- nosuchthing 12y agoYou still need to find a trustworthy 3rd party "mediator" or escrow agent, whom still holds the ability to collude with either seller or buyer for a share of the funds withheld.
- dshankar 12y ago"The site gained users’ trust by offering a feature known as “multi-signature transactions,” designed to prevent exactly the sort of bitcoin theft its administrators are now accused of." Seems like the site's differentiating feature was multiparty escrow transactions but weren't used often due to hassle?
- curiously 12y agowell looks like these thiefs selling their bitcoins will push down the prices....almost 40 million dollars they've stolen, how the fuck do they expect to cash out without getting caught?
- rhino369 12y agoHave any of the dozens upon dozens of mass-bitcoin thieves been caught? I've never heard of it. Sounds like it's actually really easy to get away with it.
- towelguy 12y agoIn small quantities.
- joeyspn 12y agoProbably they're already doing it. I was wondering why the plunge in price during the last 24h, and then I found this thread. We were in our slow-but-steady way to recovery and bam! now back to downtrend. Always the same history. Shit happens...
- Lawtonfogle 12y ago>While other sites followed the original Silk Road’s ethos of selling only victimless contraband While human sacrifices may not be a literal ingredient of drugs, calling it victimless ignores a whole lot of problems caused by drugs. Buying pot from your friend who grows it is victimless. But fueling any black market, even one that avoids identity theft, means you are supporting the marketplace that provides service to drug traffickers of the sort that kill people or that delivers highly addictive drugs that ruin far more than just their user's own life. Yes, bad government laws have made these problems much worse and are preventing truly safe victimless market places that uses locally grown and produced drugs sold in moderation, but the black market is not victimless.
- hackuser 12y agoThe drug cartels brutally murder thousands and commit many other crimes -- they are as brutal as ISIS in many ways -- they undermine and oppress entire countries and ruin large parts of American cities. Many organizations such as the Taliban and Hezbollah fund themselves via the drug trade. Some people boycott companies over political issues; how many of them still buy drugs? Every user I know, to whom I've mentioned this issue, insists their drugs come from a friend who produces it at home. But somehow the drug cartels earn billions and have worldwide distribution networks.
- exprE 12y agoProhibition laws created the drug cartels. You don't see distillers killing each others in turf wars, quite simply because it would be highly destructive to their possibility of operating on the right side of the law. To end the "wars" regarding drugs, you must end the war on drugs. Legalize everything. It won't eliminate drug abuse, just like legalizing alcohol didn't eradicate alcohol abuse, but it removes all the compounding effects caused by the substances being illegal by themselves. Besides, legalizing is, from a moral perspective, the only right way to act.
- _broody 12y agoAgreed. And then deal with it the same way you do with tobacco and alcohol, with social campaigns to raise awareness of the issues of addiction. We have a working model here for legal drugs that are just as bad or worse.
- ChartsNGraffs 12y agoPerhaps I don't understand Bitcoin well enough, but wouldn't these guys out themselves the instant they try and spend them because of the public transaction history?
- mcintyre1994 12y agoThere are tumbler services, no idea how well they work or how many are compromised but in theory it seems like it could work.
- Phlarp 12y agoI'm surprised we haven't seen more theft and fraud with the tumblers. I used one out of curiosity about two years ago and the experience was basically to fill out a super shady looking webform, send the coins to the address it gives you, and then pray like hell that they come back out the other end.
- maxerickson 12y agoIt kind of ironic, but dark markets are in a great position to offer a coin re-tainting service. It isn't quite the same thing as a tumbler, but they have busy addresses and lots of volume to obscure things with.
- DINKDINK 12y agoThe CoinJoin proposal[0] by Greg Maxwell provides transaction-history-tracing erasure capabilities. JoinMarket[1] is a market driven approach to incent CoinJoin mixing [0]https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=279249.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=279249.0 [1]https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=919116.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=919116.0
- Hermel 12y agoThey only work for small volumes.
- maxerickson 12y ago
- downandout 12y agoNot to add insult to injury, but these people posting on Reddit complaining about the money they have lost are opening themselves up to massive prison sentences. Reddit is a US site; all it takes to arrest everyone posting is to subpoena Reddit, get their IP's/emails/whatever, then raid their houses looking for drugs and whatever other contraband the police can find. Complaining publicly that you lost money on a site whose sole purpose was to sell illegal items is plenty of probable cause - especially with several implied death threats and people saying they may be killed over missing funds right in the thread. The feds will be all over this. Not that they shouldn't complain somewhere, but maybe keep it on the darknet sites.
- stordoff 12y agoI'd presume they are posting to Reddit cia TOR, so I doubt subpoenaing Reddit would give much new information.
- downandout 12y agoI thought about that, but you never know. There are other bits and pieces available...email, which might lead to a real IP via another subpoena if the person isn't careful, ad/tracking cookies, etc. I would guarantee you that some of these people aren't being that careful with their clearnet activities.
- NegatioN 12y agoWould it be worth investing those kind of resources into tracking lower-tier sellers or buyers though?
- downandout 12y agoWell....reading the thread, there are people claiming that drug gangs are going to kill people (both the owners of the site and people who are going to come up short paying their suppliers), at least one person seriously talking about suicide, and another saying that he has contact info for the owners. I can't say what resources they will put into it, but there are a ton of law enforcement red alerts and more than enough probable cause in that one thread to subpoena Reddit.
- jpatokal 12y agoOne Evolution (ex-)staff member claims that 130,000 BTC (~$35 million) were stolen: http://www.deepdotweb.com/2015/03/18/interview-with-nswgreat-evolution-staff-member/ http://www.deepdotweb.com/2015/03/18/interview-with-nswgreat...
- limorelbaz 12y agoThe original article on wired magazine now returns 404, but we're starting a discussion about this on http://www.peerlyst.com/discussions/the-dark-webs-top-drug-market-evolution-just-vanished-wired-com http://www.peerlyst.com/discussions/the-dark-webs-top-drug-m... Peerlyst is a community of 17K+ security professionals, discussing 25 areas of security (content security, cryptography, identity management, privacy etc). Once joining, you get a feed relevant to your areas of interest.