“Never before has a website so brazenly peddled illegal drugs online,” Schumer said. “By cracking down on the website immediately, we can help stop these drugs from flooding our streets.”
When Senator Schumer is speaking of a “brazen” website flooding the streets with drugs, he is referring to the Silk Road.
The Silk Road is an anonymous hidden service that you can access via the Tor network. It allows people to sell mind altering chemicals and plants in a more private and safe marketplace. The website is only accessible via the Tor network and transactions are carried out in Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is a P2P digital cryptocurrency that helps users conduct private transactions. Bitcoin is not entirely anonymous as a transaction log is maintained by the P2P network.
There are methods of using Bitcoin in a fairly anonymous manner however. Such as not tying your Bitcoin address to any known alias that you use. You can also help obscure the ownership involved in the transaction log by “washing” coins. This could be done via many small transactions to various addresses or by sending them through “laundering” services which are available. You could also have fresh coins that you have “mined” yourself which will not yet have a real trail in the transaction log.
For most people, the easiest way to gain access to the Silk Road marketplace is to first download the Tor browser bundle found here:
https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en
Secondly, you can gain access to the Silk Road address via the browser bundle with the following URL:
http://ianxz6zefk72ulzz.onion
You can read the full story on NPR if you really want to:
http://www.npr.org/2011/06/05/136971766/senators-target-website-that-sells-narcotics
What can we expect and what can you do?
In light of this coming legislation, you will likely not be targeted by computer forensics initially. This is because of the transaction and network technologies used to make the purchases. Now, this could be different if you use the same Bitcoin address publicly on your beanie-baby website that you do to receive heroin payments.
Feds will likely attempt to bust you via your shipping and receiving method. Your computers and digital electronics will then be seized as evidence. So ensure that you are using full disk encryption.
I would actually go a step further and use a Linux live CD, such as Ubuntu, in a computer or laptop which does not have a hard drive currently powered on. This is to ensure that there is no chance that the Live CD will write anything to the disk, including Swap.
Happy purchases if you decide to enjoy life by doing whatever you want with your body. Fascists like Schumer will likely live their entire lives without understanding the damage they are doing to society.
I am not as well versed on securely retrieving and sending goods like this but I am assuming the DEA will make plenty of purchases to try to find DNA, origin, etc. as well. If any of the Anti-Forensics readers have tips, I’m sure they’d be much appreciated in the comments below.
No related posts.
Good tips.
You should add that users should keep their bitcoin wallet on an encrypted thumb drive.
Actually you would likely want two copies. One that you hide somewhere after updating the dat file and one that you have handy for transactions.
Also your image captcha deal says my comment is too spammy all the time >.<
Ah yes, definitely a great idea with the wallet files. I go this route, with one on an encrypted thumb drive and one on an encrypted and in use HDD.
I have removed the annoying anti-spam mechanism too. Sorry about that.
When ever you are going to make a new transaction create a new address.
You can have a donations address…
Personal address – one you dont mind if people send you coins
Payment for laptop address – say you sell a laptop for bitcoins
Payment for Kitten – you sold a kitten for bitcoins… ok…
Then say its a new day and Bob would like to buy some weed from you; so you could set up a drop for the product…
but anyway for the bitcoins just click the new address button and make it bobs payment.
With this method you can keep track of who has paid you and how much.
P.S. Hate the captcha Had to refresh nine times.
Yeah, exactly. Great tips. I turned that captcha into space dust too, so no more annoyance.
I never used one of these sites but I wonder how they set the delivery method.
Is it really safe to send altering chemicals and plants over courrier services? or do they only deliver the goods in person?
It’s however the seller wants to send it. The site is more of a forum for people to collaborate.
I don’t use this service and I just stumbled onto your website when searching for disk wipe information, but I’m going to be reading you more, particularly in light of comments such as:
“Now, this could be different if you use the same Bitcoin address publicly on your beanie-baby website that you do to receive heroin payments.”
and
“Payment for Kitten – you sold a kitten for bitcoins… ok…”
Good job! Schumer is an ass.
yall be shamed
The site was fake. The FBI raided the servers because they were selling fake drugs, DURR
Also, anti-forensics.com, you guys are too obvious. This article is at the top of google when you type “silk road address” this comes up first.
What is happening here is that stupid drug dealers think they can sell drugs and get away with it. They cant remember the onion address so they have to google it. anti-forensics.com stats counters watch how many IPs access this webpage more than once a day.
obvious whitehat is obvious
I don’t believe they were ever raided and it looks like the server is still up. The hidden service address was taken from the Silk Road owners original post on the bitcoin.org forums.
I believe that paranoia is healthy so it’s cool. This site also ranks in the top 3 for disk wiping, beat encase, and hundreds of other keywords and gets tens of thousands of page views a day.
The server is still up. And for those of you who think the drugs are fake-your wrong. very very wrong.