On 7 November 2014 20:13, Juan <juan....@gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, 7 Nov 2014 13:04:38 +0200 > Jon Tullett <jon.tull...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On 7 November 2014 05:39, Juan <juan....@gmail.com> wrote: >> > So why would people be tracked in the first place? Are >> > you saying that the US government nazis track all of US >> > subjects all the time, and that's how they find people who >> > run 'hidden' services? >> >> Well, I wouldn't want to rule anything out :) But in this case, we're >> talking about hidden services which proxied for drug dealers. Whatever >> your personal feelings about it, the war on drugs is a given. So the >> reality is that there are enormous intelligence and law enforcement >> operations targeting people in the drug trade. If one of them starts >> to operate (or do business with) a hidden service, is it so unlikely >> that that service could get caught up in the investigation? > > > That is possible, but I'm not sure I'm fully following. Suppose > that some "off line" dealer has his phone tapped, and then he > starts selling through a market like silk road. What of it? Why > would that lead in any way to finding out who the hidden > service's owner/admin is? The hidden service's owner isn't > going to talk on the phone with the dealers who use his site. > That is not his 'business model'.
That's an assumption, and it may be incorrect. It is alleged that some HS operations were infiltrated early on - that sort of foolish trust is just the sort of basic mistake law enforcement thrives on. And infiltrating target organisations is something the LEO agencies do for a living, after all. > In the case of silk road 2 apparently the owner was a 26 year > old who even worked for SpaceX for a while. Not exactly a > memeber of the italian mafia, I'd say. So why would this > person's communications be monitored? Some genius government > employee said : let's tap some random guys' phones out of 300 > millions and see if we find silk road's owner? Or some agent gets lucky and is appointed a moderator on a darknet marketplace forum, proceeds to socially engineer his way from there. Hey trusted moderator friend, can you recommend software to do X? Why, sure I can, download Y from Z. >> If anything, I'd have thought that the coordinated takedowns lend >> credibility to that argument - it's not like dealers would only do >> business through a single marketplace at a time. Compromise or turn a >> big dealer or two, and you'd probably be able to target a whole lot of >> marketplaces at once. > > > Like I said, I'm not seeing the connection between dealers and > hidden services admins. It's not just about dealers. It's about the entire ecosystem. The drug economy is just that: an economy. Dealers are just retailers - there's an entire supply chain and supporting players extending back from that point (though online commerce certainly flattens the structure a lot!) Every part of that ecosystem is fair game for investigators, and any compromise can be leveraged along the chain. For a retail analogy, think Target, which was compromised via an HVAC contractor who probably thought they weren't a target (heh) at all. Again, I'm not suggesting this theory is correct, just that it's an option. At this stage, there's a ton of speculation and I'm cautioning against jumping to conclusions. That said, if you're running a hidden service, you absolutely should assume the worst and tighten your security practices, not just after an incident like this but on a regular basis. Risk management is a thing. -J -- tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk@lists.torproject.org To unsubscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk
