Silk Road 2.0 Users On "Defcon 5" as Related Arrests Continue Around the World
The Silk Road 2.0 fall out has yet to settle. The FBI may have been in control of Silk Road since October 17th and international government agencies are still taking action against Silk Road users around the world, presumably with information gleaned from running the site as a honeypot for a number of days. The American agencies worked with law enforcement agencies in France, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Seemingly, the UK has already taken some action against Silk Road 2.0 actors; as such, don't be surprised when more comes. The Belfast Telegraph is....
Related News
A few days ago here at CCN we reported that Bitcoin's black mark Silk Road 2.0 had been hacked. Defcon, in a long post to Silk Road 2.0 forums on Tor, explained that three attackers had used the transaction malleability bug to steal over 4,763 BTC directly from Silk Road's hot wallet. Original estimates still haven't been confirmed but Defcon himself reports that 47% of all users had lost all of their funds. As always, I must warn readers that the majority of things on the Deepweb are not in any way shape or form trustworthy. It is my, and the good Government's advice, to stay away from....
According to the Ars Technica reporter present at Blake "Defcon" Benthall's court hearing today, 11/6/14, the federal prosecutors have already received a confession from Mr. Benthall. In a short hearing today in San Francisco, California, Mr. Benthall appeared in court to confirm his name and age. The prosecutors were able to schedule a custody hearing for tomorrow, after which Mr. Benthall is likely to be transferred to New York, where the federal court case was originally filed. Mr. Benthall has not formally plead anything since he has not yet been formally indicted. Tomorrow, Blake....
Online black market Silk Road 2.0 has announced via reddit that it will forego paying its staff until it reimburses users for the more than 4,000 BTC that was compromised last week. The massive loss is said to be the work of enterprising hackers, who exploited bitcoin's ongoing transaction malleability issues to steal funds from the site, though other, more colorful theories abound. Silk Road 2.0 moderator Defcon issued a seven-point repayment plan to the community yesterday. Effective 15th February, the proposal reaffirmed his outlet's commitment to its merchants and clientele, and was....
Editor's Note: The transactions revealed by Defcon only show a total of 4474.26 BTC stolen from presumably only escrow accounts. This sum comes from transactions by attacker 1 only, and do not include the "contributions" of attackers 2 and 3. The previous incorrect estimate of "over 88,000 BTC" came from user estimates of all funds previously on Silk Road 2.0's wallets, or all funds in the wallets of the suspected attackers. Varying reports of the total amount stolen from Silk Road 2.0 stem from inherent vagueness in Defcon's words. The only concrete estimate, taken from Blockchain data....
Silk Road 2.0 has reimbursed over half its users since the February heist and has no plans to stop. It seems like Silk Road is far more resilient than most people thought. Back in May 2013, Silk Road went down due to a sustained DDoS attack, but site admins were soon able to restore the service. Then in October 2013, the United States FBI shut down the illegal online drug marketplace and arrested the site's owner - Ross Ulbricht, formerly only known as “Dread Pirate Roberts”. Many Silk Road users feared that the site was gone for good, but on 6 November 2013, site admins launched “Silk....