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Comment by Miner49er | Hacker News Reader

"'The so-called anonymity of the dark web is illusory,' said Acting Administrator Chuck Rosenberg of the DEA."

I wonder if this is true, or simply hyperbole. I'm extremely curios on the technical details of this bust.

Edit: It appears that some info can be found here https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/982821/downlo.... Look at the section "Alexandre Cazes: Alphabay's Founder and Operator"

It looks like the founder was extremely careless. His personal hotmail email was included in the header of the welcome email and password reset emails to Alphabay users. He used the same username on Alphabay on at least one forum before creating Alphabay. This username was tied with his personal email and name.

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He seemed to be pretty careless about flaunting his wealth. These forum postings are referenced in the forfeiture complaint (NSFW):

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...

Interestingly, the forum owner posted last week claiming he had suddenly passed away:

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...

That first link paints a very unflattering image of Mr. Caze, and in his own words. I couldn't dream up a more perfect depiction of the despicable personalities at the core of cryptocurrency counter-culture.

It's interesting that people on that forum are calling him a liar for claiming to drive a Porsche etc. Reading it myself I was like "wow this guy is a liar, what a tall tale."

But then in the indictment (or whatever the correct term is for the legal document linked in the parent comment) they seize a Lamborghini and a Porsche and various villas and several big piles of money etc.

Color me surprised.

Not sure why you use the word "claiming" - he has passed away.

Dread Pirate Roberts was brought down by OPSEC using basic investigation skills (correlations between one online profile and his website from stackexchange and a security flaw on his hidden service website). I think its probably just good investigating this time.

See https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/how-the-feds-too... for more information about dread pirate Roberts.

The WIRED story about the fall of DPR, although I don't have it currently, spins the story as a two part epic- really good read.

It is a little bit of an exaggeration, there are going to be a lot of people that will get caught and a lot that will get away. The point of the statement is to reduce confidence in dark net markets so they are more likely to fail.

Hansa has already taken AB's place.

Apparently law enforcement seized Hansa a month earlier and were using it as a honeypot: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/07/after-alphabays-demise-c...

Brilliant setup. Seize both sites but only keep one down so you can document suspects migrating their criminal operations.

....aaaand it's gone

I wonder if the time was intentional to allow more people to be caught.

Wow it was up last night.

Are Tor hidden services compromised?

Yeah, and anyone who fled there is screwed, as it was already under the control of law enforcement. Whoops!

Maybe. In any case involving TOR, I would not dismiss the possibility of parallel construction.

Tor hidden servers with large traffic aren't too hard to find when you can see the entire internet and can shape traffic.

I think the future is a reputation network/market built on top of something like ethereum.

Exactly! Nation-state actors can find hidden services! TOR was not built for this type of activity. Why aren't more people mentioning this?

There's at least an element of truth to it. The old adage applies - law enforcement can screw up left and right, but a single slip by the folks they're chasing is all it takes.

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