2013
10.02

Silk Road shutdown, domain seized, DPR arrested :(

Since today http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion/ is showing a seized by the FBI page.

Media is reporting Dread Pirate Roberts got arrested:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/02/us-crime-silkroad-raid-idUSBRE9910TR20131002

This is a very sad day for the Silk Road community, The Silk Road will be gone forever after this and who knows if someone else is brave enough to start a new marketplace after Atlantis Marketplace also shut down a few weeks ago.

Meanwhile all that is left are the independent vendors on the Hidden Wiki:

http://kpvz7ki2v5agwt35.onion/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Alternative Link Directories | Hidden Service Urls:

http://dirnxxdraygbifgc.onion/

http://torlinkbgs6aabns.onion/

http://jh32yv5zgayyyts3.onion/

http://wikitjerrta4qgz4.onion/

 

Silk Road Shutdown

Silk Road Domain Seized

 

Here is a nice sumary of what happened from someone on reddit:

  • This has been a joint operation run the cybercrime squad within the FBI’s New York field office. It involved the FBI, DEA, IRS and Homeland Security’s investigative unit.
  • It’s unstated from when the investigation started, but they received a complete copy of the Silk Road web server on the 23rd of July 2013.
  • This included user account and transaction information. It’s unclear whether or not this covers addresses and other sensitive transaction information.
  • From February 6, 2011 to July 23 2013, 9,519,664BTC was generated in sales, 614,305BTC going directly to DPR in the way of “commissions”. This comes to a total of 1,229,465 transactions.
  • Based on the copy of the site which the FBI received, they believe DPR to have been the sole operator and owner of SR, handling all aspects of the site himself and delegating only user affairs to appointed moderators.
  • In March of this year, a SR user/vendor called “FriendlyChemist” attempted to extort DPR via SR’s private message system, providing proof that he had the names/addresses of thousands of vendors/users after having allegedly hacked a bigger vendor. He demanded $500,000USD, saying that he needed the money to pay off his supplier. DPR then stated that he wished to speak to FriendlyChemist’s supplier.
  • A user called “redandwhite” then proceeded to contact DPR, stating that he was FriendlyChemist’s supplier and also the owner of his debt. DPR then solicited redandwhite to “execute” FriendlyChemist, supplying redandwhite his full name and address. After having agreed on terms, DPR sent redandwhite approximately $150,000USD (1,670BTC) to have FriendlyChemist killed. redandwhite later provided photographic proof of the alleged murder.
  • Investigators could not find any record of somebody in that region being killed around that date or matching that description. This possibly implies that DPR was duped/scammed, but, DPR is also quoted as having told redandwhite the following: “Not long ago, I had a clean hit done for 80k.”
  • DPR has been identified as Ross William Ulbricht.
  • > “He is 29 years old, graduated from the University of Texas with a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics in 2006. From 2006 to 2010, he attended graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania School of Materials Science and Engineering.”
  • His LinkedIn profile is at: http://www.linkedin.com/in/rossulbricht

Now, onto how he got caught…

  • An agent involved in the investigation (“Agent-1”), found the first few references to SR on the internet from somebody only identified as “altoid”, attempting to promote the site in its beginning days, in January of 2011.
  • In October of the same year, a user also going by the name of “altoid” made a posting on Bitcoin Talk titled “a venture backed Bitcoin startup company”, which directed interested users to “rossulbricht at gmail dot com”.
  • That email address is what led to DPR’s downfall.

Ross Ulbricht about himself on Linkedin:

“I love learning and using theoretical constructs to better understand the world around me. Naturally therefore, I studied physics in college and worked as a research scientist for five years. I published my findings in peer reviewed journals five times over that period, first on organic solar cells and then on EuO thin-film crystals. My goal during this period of my life was simply to expand the frontier of human knowledge.

Now, my goals have shifted. I want to use economic theory as a means to abolish the use of coercion and agression amongst mankind. Just as slavery has been abolished most everywhere, I believe violence, coercion and all forms of force by one person over another can come to an end. The most widespread and systemic use of force is amongst institutions and governments, so this is my current point of effort. The best way to change a government is to change the minds of the governed, however. To that end, I am creating an economic simulation to give people a first-hand experience of what it would be like to live in a world without the systemic use of force.”

2013
09.30

Botnet still slowing down Tor but situation is getting better

As you can see here

Tor Connections

The number of botnet clients using the Tor network is still around 3.5 million, but the next picture shows that overall network performance is getting better again:

Tor Performance

Browsing .onion sites like the hidden wiki is still slower than usual, and often sites dont load at all.

What you can do is:

1. Dont use .onion.to and other web proxys, install the Tor browser bundle from torproject.org

2. If a site fails to load, hit “new identity” in Tor/Videlia and then refresh the site, after it loaded once its usually working fine.

 

2013
09.04

Check out this new hidden wiki alternative

There is a new site listing .onion hidden services, which contains much higher percentage of working links than the hidden wiki:

OnionDir, located at:

http://dirnxxdraygbifgc.onion/

Or with web proxys:

http://dirnxxdraygbifgc.onion.to/

http://dirnxxdraygbifgc.onion.lu/

I especially like that you can just copy and paste all the links to some text file to keep some personal bookmarks of tor hidden services.

So far all links seem to be working, which is also a bonus since the hidden wiki is a mess these days since Freedom Hosting went down.

Will OnionDir become the new hidden wiki? We think at least it has the potential to be a nice alternative.

Tell us what you think.

OnionDir Hidden Service Directory

 

2013
09.03

Tor network under huge DDOS

The Tor network is under a huge DDOS right now, as you can see on the following statstics from the Tor project:

Tor DDOS

New Tor Users

Seems like noone really knows whats going on, it could be new users, or a large botnet trying to DDOS the Tor network.

But traffic on our Tor relay has trippled and most hidden services including the hidden wiki seem to be down / not working.

 

 

2013
08.23

Over 50% of all .onion sites down since Freedom Hosting owner got arrested.

On 5th august 2013 Eric Eoin Marques, founder of Freedom Hosting, which hosted over 50% of all hidden services got arrested by the FBI and NSA.

Their motivation was clearly Tormails database, which contains thousands of email conversations between for example users of the Silk Road Marketplace, or more importantly maybe even communication between whistleblowers and journalists.

Since the Hidden Wiki and OPVA, 2 of the largest remaining hidden services, are also down since yesterday, we suspect the FBI / NSA operation is still ongoing.

You are welcome to leave a comment to this article if you got more information about the recent crackdown on Tor hidden services.

 

2013
08.23

How to access the Deep Web

Step 1:
Download and install the Tor browser from: https://www.torproject.org/. You will want to download the Tor Browser Bundle, as it is already set up and ready to go. The browser is available on different platforms and you can run it from anywhere; even a USB drive. This means you are also able to use “live” versions of operating systems if you wish, eliminating the traces that may otherwise be left due to spyware and other malware located on your computer.

Download Tor Browser

Download Tor Browser

Step 2:
In the Tor browser go to one of the following Tor Hidden Service link lists to get started:

Tor Link List
Onion List

Bookmark TheHiddenWiki.org and the above sites so you can always have quick access to the Deep Web.

2013
07.27

What is the Deep Web?

The Deep Web, also known as the Darknet, Onionland or Tor Hidden Services, is created as a way for web surfers to explore the Internet and different websites without the fear of being tracked or spied on. This occurs through the usage of Onion links, or Onion url’s, which end in the .onion suffix These Tor Onion links are different than normal ones in that they can only be seen when running the Tor client. In other words, even if you know an Onion url, it does no good unless you are running Tor, as you will just get errors when you try to visit it. This is because of how the DNS is handled, and is also a great thing since it keeps you from connecting to Tor Onion sites transparently on accident!

As you might guess, because of the nature of Tor, it is a lot harder to find the sites you are looking for. To help with this, there is the Hidden Wiki, also known as the Deep Web Wiki. This is an editable wiki (much like you are undoubtedly familiar with) that contains a lot of Deepweb links. This helps by giving a central area for finding Tor Onion sites, and is like one massive Tor linklist.

If you create your own Tor Onion site, you can run it without the fear of it being shut down, due to the nature of how the system works. This allows you to host any type of content you wish without any fears, as long as you do so safely (for example, by not publicly sharing identifiable information). When you create a site, you will have a hard time getting traffic to it since nobody will know it exists. This is where the Onion list on the Hidden Wiki comes in, since it is the central place for finding the links for the Tor Deep Web.

To get to the Tor Hidden Wiki, simply load up Tor (the red box higher up on the page has the instructions) and head to the Hidden Wiki url: Tor Hidden Wiki. Once there, you will be able to see the various categories in which you can find all the Hidden Wiki links.

The Hidden Wiki Main Page

The Hidden Wiki Main Page

It is worth noting that while the Deep Web is created to be an anonymous area, it does not necessarily mean everything that goes on there is illegal. Many people just like to keep their privacy, and will use the Tor network, as well as the Tor links, to ensure that they are kept anonymous. You will find a lot of blogs, websites, forums, image boards and other sites while you explore the Hidden Wiki, so when you get there take it slow and do not get overwhelmed. Everything is organized pretty well, so being able to work out what you are interested in or not is pretty simple!

At the same time that there are sites that are for regular activities, there are also some that are for more illicit ones. For example, there is Silkweb, which is a marketplace for dealing with drugs like weed/cannabis/hashish, LSD, heroin, cocaine and more. The transactions that occur on the site are seen as being secure, and since there is no way to shut it down or otherwise gain the information of the various visitors there is really no risk to visiting it, even if you do not end up using the site.

If you end up using Tor, just be sure that you follow the directions in our guide at the top of the site to ensure that you are staying safe and secure while you browse! Not doing this is just like throwing out your identity, and that depletes the entire purpose of the Tor network and what it is designed for.

Some sites, such as Silkroad, require registration before they can be used. You are safe to create these accounts but do not use any usernames that can trace back to you!

Silk Road Marketplace

Silk Road Marketplace

Also, it is worth mentioning that you can use the Tor browser to anonymously browse any site. It is not limited to just the Onion links, but rather anything at all. For example, you can use it when you check your regular email, go to forums, create accounts on different sites, etc. if you do not want everyone to know who you really are or where you are connecting from. In fact, once you get more familiar with how the Tor network works, you may prefer to do this with everything!

The down side to how Tor works is that because it skips you through so many different proxies, it can be quite slow at times. This is really hit-and-miss, though, and connecting at different times of the day is usually good enough to help fix this. In any case, the prospect of remaining anonymous and being able to visit what you want, when you want and without the risk of being spied on makes the sometimes slow connections bearable! While you are running Tor, you can always run your normal browser as well for anything you do not feel the need to remain anonymous on.