Official press release on the Silk Road arrests | Hacker News Reader

Official press release on the Silk Road arrests

justice.gov

25 pointssteveklabnik14 comments

Unfuckingbelievable. 'Inigo' was bragging on various u/g forums that he had "taken special precautions" to never be arrested while an entire chorus of people told him to stop using that name, and to disappear because he was wanted by the FBI. Lesson: don't taunt the feds, follow thegrugq advice of stfu is best policy

In other news new SR is hiring pen testers at $3k per week permanent p/t job. Comes with a life sentence as a signing bonus unless you live in Russia or Brazil

what does u/g stand for?

underground

Does anyone know any details regarding why the moderators are each being charged with "one count of conspiracy to commit computer hacking"? I cringe at the thought that this is only because they happened to commit crimes using a computer.

It's because Silk Road sold a lot of hacking tools (password sniffers, key loggers, and remote access tools) alongside the drugs.

Silk Road didn't sell anything, they were just the marketplace.

Accomplice would be the word used to associated guilt..

Probably internal messages where they discussed or sold each other hacked RDP or something to use on top of a Tor exit for trading coins or whatever. Maybe conspired to hire a shady person to go after competition, who knows

I'm kinda amazed that the support staff would risk their freedom for only 50-75k a year.

It's not unbelievable if the maintenance was low enough to hold another full time job. 75k untaxed spending money is no pocket change. Also, they may have all been pushing products/services, as well.

Bottom rung drug dealers make less than that, and are probably in a higher risk position.

They're not though. They face less risk.

No.

You can kind of see how you could get sucked into this, though. Suppose for example you start out simply participating on the forums. At some point someone reaches out to you and says something like, "Hey, you seem like a fair and diplomatic person and we like having you around, how about we pay you to moderate?"

In that context it might have felt pretty harmless. It's somewhat analogous to being rude to people on the Internet. We all know it's awfully easy to antagonize people who you're not face-to-face with. Similarly, being a forum moderator for the Silk Road must have felt a lot different than standing around in a warehouse while a bunch of Columbians package coke.

From a legal perspective, I guess it wasn't that different after all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com