Brit cops nab six in Silk Road 2.0 drugs sting British cops have arrested six people suspected of links to the online drugs bazaar Silk Road 2.0. Officers from the National Crime Agency made the arrests over allegations their targets had been selling drugs or working as administrators for the dark web narcotics store. All six suspects have been bailed following a police …
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29950946
"The so-called deep web - the anonymous part of the internet - is estimated to be anything up to 500 times the size of the surface web."
Sounds like we need a new Register Unit, 'estimates of the size of parts the internet', perhaps named 'Bullshits'?
I've tracked that one down, the BBC and a load of other crapy sites parroting this rubbish got it from the same place. The ultimate source of the 500x larger claim seems to be this paper from 2001: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jep/3336451.0007.104?view=text;rgn=main
It's talking about dynamic vs static web pages, and how the search engine's of the day have trouble indexing the latter (which it calls the "deep web").
@ mike2R
Thank you! I've been wondering about that claim for a while.
I checked my server and about 100MB of the content seems to be indexed. However, there are several GB of files that aren't crawled (given out as direct links). Those files are mostly recordings of my lectures about epistemology and ontology. So I guess that's my contribution to the "dark net"... epistemology and ontology.
It's not rubbish, "deep web" != "dark net".
The dark net (assuming that's the unindexed naughty stuff) is just a subset of the deep web (all the stuff that can't be indexed due to paywalls, access controls, robots.txt files or no hyperlinks to its content).
Hippies, do not forget, these guyz were NOT ONLY dealing HTC, they were dealing other stuff such as heroin.
No, I do not take illegal drugs, as beer, wine & co do it for me. I have absolutely no problem with ppl taking HTC stuff, though, and don't forget their brain usually gets damaged over the years - I know many who are taking this crap daily, they are now slow thinkers ... even when they have not had anything over the last few days. I guess AA attendees have these issues as well, though.
Now, the irony is, not later than last week was there a documentary on French TV, prime time, about the dark net ... they claimed it was "safe" for villains ... Now, you must know that French TV is heavily censured, not as much as during the 60's & 70's or between 2005 and 2012, but still.
So obviously, when these topics come up on TV here it means the French intelligence (TNS/Sofres aka RG) have the means to get you.
I do not bother to post anon, because they already know me, what I say about them on the interwebs and the day they smash my front door in, all they'll get is a Royal British Salute: \/
I know a couple of people who have managed to overcome their alcohol addiction, at least for a while. There appears to be a certain amount of recovery over a period of a few months, but like others who have over-used this drug I fear their may be some permanent impairment of mental capacity. Alcohol is not terribly safe, especially if used on a regular basis.
'I don't expect my door broken down by armed police over £20 bag of weed.'
Of course they are going to kick in your front door at 6:00am (probably on monday as the guvnor won't sanction weekend overtime)
1. it is only weed so you are unlikely to put up much of a fuss.
2. it is only a small amount so you are unlikely to be armed sufficiently to defend your stash.
3. if you are buying on the internet then you haven't bought protection as only authorised resellers (of previously confiscated stashes) get that.
It will cost the best part of 15-20 grand to haul you through the system in order to extract a £50 fine + £100 costs - they will also give you a criminal record which could depress your future earnings (and your tax contributions)
They don't care about this though because it keeps them in a job, some of them will get extra pension contributions and it's not their money they are squandering anyway.
Clearly TOR is broken badly and it's possible that since it was developed in the US, that it's always been broken as far as the NSA is concerned. This take-down suggests that all TOR activity is effectively transparent to the NSA.
I wouldn't trust any replacement for TOR that's developed in the US.
I always thought it was a flawed concept. You may be able to enlighten me:
All traffic at some point leaves via an exit node, is that correct?
Well if you own enough of the exit nodes as well as a shit load of intermediate hops and a big ol' computer, surely with a bit of brute force and trial and error, you may be able to piece the bits together.
Feel free to correct me.
Is it TOR that is broken or have they managed to gain access to a database that holds all the names and address of the various parties ?
Or there is a super snitch, or the NSA have simply shared details of what they managed to gleen from the exit nodes that they pwned...
In any event some deep thought will probably now go into building a deeper, darker web...
The criminals, cough, businessman/politicians, cough, stand to lose too much if the TOR et al are not brought back into production...
The first Silk Road bust and the Freedom Hosting bust didn't compromise Tor, and the Tor developers have always said that Tor doesn't trump "police work". We know they had a man inside Silk Road 2.0. Now we need to figure out how they busted 400 other sites. Many of them were probably hosted by the same person.
@Cliff
Yes, even taking it to the level of being the Super Root or whatever the top level Admin is thereby becoming the host of hosts... Which would then have the potential of created the worlds largest honeypot, provide an amazing piggybank full of Bitcoins and the equivalant of a top of the range Dyson SuperHoover for collecting user details...
Next time I want to invest in some Sativa, Indica or Ruderalis I'm going down the pub...
@Version 1.0: I do not agree that TOR is clearly broken and have not seen any evidence of that. They had someone on the inside working for the main man (be careful who you hire) and apparently he used his normal email account for certain things. Complacent or ignorant I know not which, but certainly not careful. No breach of TOR was necessary. As for other sites it is likely, as others have posted, that there may be commonalities such as staff or hosting.
That they managed to run a web-intensive business from the depths of mid-Wales (Aberdyfi). Broadband round here is generally not brilliant, although we're due to get FTTC in a couple of months. Maybe I need to rethink my career options.
Of course mid-Wales has a long (and honourable?) history of being a production centre for mind-altering substances (Operation Julie in the 1970s), and I'm told there are a number of people up in the hills who are allegedly growing more than tomatoes in their greenhouses, allegedly. The local village show even has a category for 'the best grass' (no, not that sort)
Pen-Y-Gors,
They have been doing it for years..
I read a short book about, what was at the time, one of Britains largest LSD factories which was located somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Wales.. I do not know if you know it but the bust itself was called Operation Julie, it's worth a quick read if you can get your hands on a copy...
Factory as in "operation" not as in building, as it was located in a small welsh cottage. LSD does not require a very large establishment to create huge quantities.. I think that a one litre bottle in the drinking water system is easilly enough to knock out the population of London, possibly more, for a couple of hours.
It should be obvious enough from a map, but New Waltham is effectively a suburb of Grimsby and Cleethorpes.
I don't know that this makes Tor unreliable, but since the original intent was to provide a data channel for spies, this does rather suggest there is something new being used by the spies.
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