DEF CON 21 - Unexpected Stories From a Hacker Inside the Government

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Comments

Safiyah at November 24,2016
As many comments said, it would be naive to think that shutting down The Silk Road would be the end of it and of course competitors would flock to the opportunity to fill the void in the market. The presentation was well organized and it was nice to see the timeline of how the evidence was accumulated from as far back as 2011, though he wasn't caught until later in 2013. It was also disturbing how quickly the blackmail situation escalated into arranging a hit on someone's life, a feeling enhanced by the casual manner in which they haggled for a price, even matter-of-factly confessing to a past murder-for-hire crime. It just goes to show how untouchable people feel they become when hidden behind the perceived anonymity of cyberspace. Overall, dspite some gaps in information and detail, it was cool to see how the investigation of this case progressed in a fairly realistic manner.
jwren2 at December 12,2016
This Silk Road black market is mind boggling. Buy and sell anything? He didn’t mention child pornography in there, which I’m sure is extremely common. Hitmen?! This is just crazy! And the Tor and bitcoin use to provide anonymity. You shut one black market down, two more will pop up.
dbegum at December 13,2016
The video is very interesting. I love how the speaker presented his PowerPoint in an interesting narrative way with timelines. It’s interesting to see how FBI cracked the case and shut down the 4M dollar racket. Looking at this case, it does look like it takes a lot to crack a case like this. There were too many clues that were left behind and glad it was able to solve the case. The criminal wasn’t very smart looks like. My only confusion is if I am a black marker vendor or customer, how did I get through but not an authority? I mean can an undercover person really go and pretend like making a purchase and capture the network activities? Maybe it’s not as easy as it seems. Also, this gives the birth of new black market to rise as someone probably is thinking to do something like this without making mistakes that DPR did.
dbegum at December 13,2016
The video is very interesting. I love how the speaker presented his PowerPoint in an interesting narrative way with timelines. It’s interesting to see how FBI cracked the case and shut down the 4M dollar racket. Looking at this case, it does look like it takes a lot to crack a case like this. There were too many clues that were left behind and glad it was able to solve the case. The criminal wasn’t very smart looks like. My only confusion is if I am a black marker vendor or customer, how did I get through but not an authority? I mean can an undercover person really go and pretend like making a purchase and capture the network activities? Maybe it’s not as easy as it seems. Also, this gives the birth of new black market to rise as someone probably is thinking to do something like this without making mistakes that DPR did.
Taylorlou at December 13,2016
This was roller coaster case. I remember reading about it in the news when Ulbricht was first arrested and thinking how incredibly complicated this investigation must've been. Interestingly, as the presenter pointed out, the lead didn't come from following a Tor network trail but rather a user slip up on a forum. Tor is one of those inventions that has come with good and bad. But, in this case has given a platform for criminals of all nature to come together in way that allows growth of this type of activity. Like the present said, Silk Road may have been taken down but what about Tor still remains alive and pliable to the uses of other criminal looking to create their own versions of this underground dark bazaar. This case also brought up some other issues about computer and personal privacy that is still questioned today.