A history of Silk Road, the net’s largest hidden service and drug marketplace — Weirder Web #8
“An individual’s rights ARE the goal, ARE the mission, ARE the program.”
When Silk Road launched in February 2011, it was one of several online marketplaces selling drugs to the public. If a buyer wanted to shop around, the Open Vendor Database (OVDB) and The Farmer’s Market (TFM) were two other relatively popular options available around that time. In 2012, OVDB was absorbed into Silk Road and TFM fell to a major drug bust. The Silk Road remains active today as the largest market of its kind.
Online drug markets have a long, difficult-to-pin-down past that extends back beyond Silk Road and the Bitcoins spent there to more than a decade of dealing over different mediums. Finding information on past markets is difficult. When asked, some veteran vendors will talk about older digital currencies such as e-gold, Pecunix, Liberty Reserve and even Western Union and PayPal being used on markets like The Hive or in small, ephemeral IRC channels. Still others point to deals made in the 1990s and even further back on Usenet.
Some of the old vendors and buyers from these markets will not talk about them in public. Years after most of these markets ceased to exist, former patrons still stick to an old ethos that once covered them all: Loose lips sink ships.
It took black markets like Silk Road using anonymizing tools such as Bitcoin and Tor to bring these activities closer to sunlight.
“Silk Road is hands down the most popular mainstream internet drug market to ever be,” wrote user kmfkewm. “It also uses some of the best security honestly, although there is room for improvement for sure. It was the first community to embrace Bitcoin and one of the first to operate openly (OVDB launching almost simultaneously and Black Market Reloaded coming shortly after). It was the second drug market to be structured similar to E-bay or Amazon (the others were more like OVDB with a forum and private message system versus a market interface). TFM was the first market to have a market interface built into their community as far as I know, but I am pretty sure the Silk Road interface pwnt theirs.”
Whereas most older markets had operated as closed forums, chats, instant messages or otherwise privately organized groups, Silk Road is the most recognizable name in a new generation of marketplaces. The site’s open market, large and active community, polished interface and business model mimicking the best of eBay, Craigslist and Amazon have played instrumental roles in the rise of the Road.
Filed under: Marketplaces | 4 Comments
Tags: Adrian Chen, Bitcoins, Black Market Reloaded, Dread Pirate Roberts, Drugs, e-gold, Guns, Liberty Reserve, Open Vendor Database, Pecunix, Silk Road, The Farmer's Market, The Hive, Tor
The rise of Errata’s Shop.
Whatever else they might have to say about it today, no one can deny that Errata’s Shop was good at what it did. Errata himself was the consummate online startup CEO: ambitious, affable, attractive to new customers, community-oriented, charismatic and smart enough to think he could get away with running a massively illegal and mightily profitable enterprise.
On Sunday, September 23, 2012, Errata created a thread on the HackBB.onion forums to promote his new business: he sold working American credit card numbers to anyone willing to pay. In the same way that a legal startup might create a thread on a large site like reddit or Hacker News, Errata skillfully placed his slick new product in the face of customers who wanted it badly.
HackBB (pictured above) is a public forum that helps facilitate and support a number of black markets. The relevant market here is fraudulent finances. That includes credit card fraud, Paypal fraud, ATM skimming and a variety of other crimes.
Being public and popular, HackBB is often the subject of scorn, scoffed at as full of scammers and relative immature amateurs compared to private forums and other less-than-public carding communities. One look at the HackBB forums shows the truth in those statements — see the adolescent-level aggression, flames and occasional outright naivete. But that story leaves out an important fact: HackBB is full of money ready to be spent. That alone is enough to keep it worthwhile for its visitors.
Once an entrepreneur like Errata has a service or market he’d like to promote, all he has to do is post about it on HackBB to attract attention. Once enough users and, ultimately, the site’s administrators use the service successfully, it is declared verified. This new status can open the floodgates to many more customers, money and people of all stripes who want to see what’s being offered.
Over the past decade, there have been many attempts to build sustainable, professional-quality online storefronts for stolen credit cards, a necessarily fragmented criminal industry that costs American businesses $190 billion per year according to Forbes. This 2011 report surveys more than a dozen different shops available just one year ago.
If you’re in the market for stolen cards, the problem you’ll immediately notice with the 2011 report is that many of the shops are now closed up. It’s often unclear just who shuts the door on these services. Carding shops and dealers come and go quickly, most often without a note to the customers. The holy grail of carding is a steady, reliable and, if you’re lucky, quick source. If you find one, you stick to it. When Errata came around in September, there were thousands of carders searching for just that.
Here’s how Errata first pitched his new credit card shop:
Tired of waiting days for cards? Not knowing if you will get a refund for dead cards?
We present to you Errata Shop. An automated CVV onion site with built in checker for auto refund of dead cards.
Features:
Automatic bitcoin payments available 24/7.
Fresh stock added every day.
Listings include many infos like BIN, ZIP so can buy only what you need exactly.
Automated checker for instant refund of invalid cards.
Cheapest prices and even more discounts on cards expiring soon.
Fast and professional support.
More products coming soon.Registration is open. If no deposit in 24hours after register, account will be deleted and you have to register again.
Please read site instructions in Help/FAQ section. Any other questions you can contact me.
Email Support: Errata@tormail.org
The pitch linked to Errata’s shop.
No one bit immediately. With no response for three hours after posting his thread, Errata decided to light the fires by tempting his first customers in with an offer they couldn’t resist. He gave them something for nothing.
Continue reading ‘A hacker’s race to build the Amazon.com of stolen credit cards — Weirder Web #7’
Filed under: Marketplaces | 6 Comments
Tags: Errata, HackBB, OptimusCrime
The dying bloggers: documenting terminal illness from first ache to final day — Weirder Web #6
“ok i’m dead. so what? i partook of much wonder and beauty. you should be so lucky!”
In the past decade or so, a unique genre of blogging emerged in which people suffering from terminal illnesses wrote about their experiences from start to finish. These blogs have engaged millions of readers, sometimes at speeds dizzying to both the writer and reader.
Some of the dying bloggers are gifted professional writers who transition into the new subject of their own death. Several dying bloggers are children who have barely if ever written about anything but their own illness. A number of them are parents leaving their family something to know them by.
Following these blogs during the lives of the writers has proven to be a powerful experience for readers, made evident by the comments they’ve written, the letters they’ve sent and the continued visits to the blogs years after the death of the writers.
—
Brian Hill went to the doctor on Christmas eve, Wednesday, December 24, 2003 for an MRI.
The MRI showed a dark mass in his brain. When he came home that night, he created a blog, wrote a post about his appointment and emailed his friends asking them to read it.
So the MRI today shows there is something on my brain that is not supposed to be there. The doctor thinks it is not a tumor. That would be good news. The thing is on the cortex (the outer layer), and it is in the motor region, which controls the movement of the limbs. Since it is on the right hemisphere, my left arm and leg are the ones that are acting funny. Lazy. Tingly. I have noticed myself stuttering, using the wrong word sometimes (broccoli instead of ravioli), slurring words, and ‘mix-mashing’ syllables … or just not remembering the word I need. I counted this up to getting older and having two small children. The doctor says that the thing on my brain is close to the speech center, and that I have some other little thingies on the other hemisphere that are right in the middle of the speech center. So now I have an excuse for everything. I have an excuse for why I go to the store, find and verify the correct item that my wife sent me for, and still come back with the wrong thing. I have an excuse. My wife may wish she could get such an excuse.
Maybe this would be a lot of worry followed by a lot of relief, Brian wrote, maybe. In any event, he was lucky to be alive and able to complain at all, he added earnestly, and you readers are lucky too.
Brian’s blog was visible to the public but his name was noticeably absent from it. He asked those who knew that he was behind the blog to keep his identity confidential as he began this new chapter in his life.
The morning after his first post, Brian woke up to remember that he hadn’t included the URL of the blog in the email to his friends. Then he promptly cooked a spoon in the microwave. What was simply stress? What was that big mass in his brain responsible for?
On Friday, the day after Christmas and two days after the first MRI, Brian had an appointment for a second MRI. After a struggle, he overcame his claustrophobia and slid into the machine again.
I was trying to decide whether to lie to them and tell them I saw a piece of obscene graphitti inside their precious machine. Then I had to stop myself from laughing, because you are not supposed to move or jiggle while you are in there.The MRI makes a lot of loud mechanical pulsing and buzzing noises. It sounded like house techno music.
Over the next few days, Brian wondered about the mass. A week after the initial diagnosis, it was too soon for him to be sure that anything was getting better or worse. He was sure only that he was more conscious than ever more of the many scatterbrained mistakes he was making. He walked into a door and bled, incredulous all the while. He made constant typos on his blog that he would have to laboriously correct before publishing. Was it his new “Mysterious Condition”?
What was imagined deterioration and what was real? What was happening?
Continue reading ‘The dying bloggers: documenting terminal illness from first ache to final day — Weirder Web #6’
Filed under: Blogs | 2 Comments
Tags: Adrian Chen, Blogger, Blogging, Death, Dying bloggers, Fakes, Gawker, LiveJournal, lucidending, reddit, Suicide, YouTube
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Simon and Sharon Ng
“He is already in the house. He is still here right now, smoking, walking all around the house.”
When Sek Man Ng moved from Hong Kong to New York City, he Americanized his name. Thus it was Simon Ng who lived in a Queens, New York apartment with his older sister, Sharon Ng, originally Cho Man Ng.
Simon began blogging on Xanga on October 3, 2002. He hated talking about himself, he wrote, but wanted to try to keep a diary. He described doing programming homework and playing Warcraft 3, not unlike many other 16 year old high school students in 2002. After four quick posts, he stopped blogging for three years.
Simon’s life changed drastically during those three years. His parents moved back to Hong Kong in 2004, leaving Simon, 18 at the time, and his sister together in the Queens apartment. Because the siblings rarely saw each other before 10 p.m. each night, Simon was often left to his own devices.
Simon continued blogging on April 22, 2005:
Imagine a guy who doesn’t know how to take care of himself and had been relying on others for like 18 years. All of a sudden have to take care of themselves. So its been hell, two meals rarely and one meal a day most likely -_-. Overcooking and messed up cooking all the time. If it was before I would just say fuck it, lets wait for my dad to cook me some food ( Proceed to throw them all into the bin). Now I have to eat whatever crap I cook out, which is pretty bad believe me. Anyway I am starting to get used to this life style and am improving day by day doing all these small stuff that everyone probably knows how to do.
Now convinced that he had wasted his youth, Simon swore to improve himself. After barely ever stepping foot in a library, he began spending 4-8 hours per day studying at his college’s library. He earned two A- grades, one A and one B+ during his first semester in college.
It is regretable that I screwed up on the finals, because my laziness kicked in. I really wanted to get 2 A- and 2 A+ and I know I could… Yeah I know I should be happy bout it but I am a greedy person. The reason I have regret is probably because it wasn’t all As. I would have really surprised my parents and makes them happy ;) (Not that it hasn’t ;P).
Simon signed up for a $600 summer science course and was hoping to land a job soon. He began blogging regularly, hoping to keep a record that he could look back on in four years when he graduated from college.
The last May of Simon’s life was chronicled closely on his blog.
Continue reading ‘A blogger’s final post solves his own murder — Weirder Web #5’
Filed under: Blogs | 8 Comments
Tags: 2005, Homicide, New York City, Xanga
A politician attempts to disconnect from his online life of white supremacy — Weirder Web #4
“They can have my guns, bullets first.”
We’re coming into a generation of leaders who will have grown up on the internet and know no world without it.
What will happen to our online pasts when we all have a lifetime of potentially shameful Facebook pictures, forum posts and tweets to hide? In 2030, how much will a politician have to pay to have his extensive online past scrubbed? Will it even be possible to clean your past completely? Will a future candidate for President live in fear of old blogs and ancient forum posts coming back to haunt him or her?
At least the old IRC chat logs are gone forever, right? Right?
In 2005, Doug Hanks ran as a Republican for a seat on the City Council of Charlotte, North Carolina. Doug was 36, a relatively young age in the traditionally wrinkled world of politics. He had been using the internet for years. In fact, he made thousands of posts on major forums where he was comfortable enough to have his username listed simply as Doug.
Doug joined Stormfront on May 2, 2002. Stormfront is one of the first and most successful white supremacist forums on the internet. The Southern Poverty Law Center calls it “the most influential hate site on the net.” The site was born into politics in 1990 as an organizing point for former Grand Wizard David Duke’s failed U.S. Senate campaign in Louisiana. Stormfront’s popularity rose in the mid-90s when it opened to the public. It came to national attention when it was featured in Hate.com, a 2000 CBS documentary about the online white supremacy movement.
When Doug joined the site in 2002, there were around 5,000 members. It was an impressive forum population at the time. Today, Stormfront boasts 194,936 members.
Filed under: Politics | Leave a Comment
Tags: Charlotte, Doug Hanks, North Carolina, Race, Stormfront
“It’s almost bed time.”
Those are the first words Joseph Edward Duncan III wrote in his blog on Sunday, January 4, 2004.
Joe was 43 years old when he started the blog he called The Fifth Nail. By 2004, he had already served 17 years in prison for stealing cars and raping at least two young boys at gunpoint. Duncan himself told his therapist that he’d raped over a dozen younger boys by the time he was 16 years old. In his own words, Joe grew up in prison.
He was in and out of jail in 90s, living all over the west coast before starting the blog. By the time he was let out of prison in 2000, he moved to Fargo, North Dakota in apparent attempt to begin a new life.
Almost bed time, I hope I can get some sleep after sleeping in to noon today.
In his first post, Joe wrote about wasting time playing video games, feeding his cat and the self-delusion he noticed suffered by millions about the supposed heights human intelligence. It was an unremarkable start. No one was reading what he wrote.
Joe slept in the next day, missing his alarm. He worked late to make up time lost. When he got home, he wrote a 1400 word essay on why sex offenders do what they do. Offenders are victims of their badly distorted view of reality, he wrote, and of a justice system ill equipped to handle anyone from sex offenders to drug addicts. The offenders don’t believe they’re hurting the children, he blogged, and the system doesn’t know how to react to that. He insists that “the system” — that is, the justice system, the mental health system and society at large — has to tell the offenders the truth, though it becomes clear that the truth is a moving target for Joe.
The most poignant passage in the blog is this:
I am not a pedophile nor have I ever been accused of being one. Also, I was a child (age 16) when I committed my crime. And possibly most significant; because of my appearance and family circumstances I was molested so often and by so many different people that, up until the time of my offense, I actually thought it was normal and that everybody did it.
The following day, Joe made it into work on time. He found time in the evening to berate the existence of the Prison Industrial Complex after setting up motion-detecting security cameras in his home because he felt paranoid about going back to prison. Every time he heard about a child being hurt on the news, he’d check his alibi. He thought the cameras documenting his life might help if another case came up.
Filed under: Blogs | Leave a Comment
Tags: Blogging, Homicide, Idaho, Joseph Edward Duncan III, Minnesota
The Ballad of Tony76.
On January 10, 2012 at 7:08 a.m., Tony76 registered an account at Silk Road.
Silk Road is an anonymous marketplace famous for its brazen selling of drugs. Ever since Adrian Chen wrote about the site in 2011, it’s been famously considered a successful cross between Amazon and eBay in the online drug world. Anonymous buyers and sellers depend on Bitcoins to anonymously transfer wealth and user reviews to establish trust.
There are currently over 6,000 drugs being sold at Silk Road including “10 gr high grade MDMA 80% +” for about $170, “Cocaine good quality 1.0g” for about $40 and “Extreme quality Black Tar” for about $270.
By January 18, 2012, Tony76 was already selling drugs on Silk Road. At 1:31 a.m., he established his personal and official feedback thread in the site’s forums, soliciting reviews from customers to establish trust and offering updates and news on new products.
Within a couple of days of Tony shipping his product from Canada, the positive reviews started rolling in.
“got my H today from Tony76,” wrote user toelessJoe. “Just had a small taste and I say way to go, Tony. Very good gear! Feeling double plus good right now… I truly hope that you stick around, you’re off to a great start as a new Vendor – and that potential buyers gives you a try.”
The reviews were good enough to provoke excitement from users and even a bit of hopeful skepticism from potential buyers. When more and more positive feedback came in, user oldschoolclubkid said some of the reviews looked strange, wished Tony luck and said he’d have to wait and see. He eventually became a buyer.
Several customers wrote that they’d spent the best $20 of their lives on Tony’s products. Tony offered a wide selection of drugs including heroin and MDMA, his most popular products.
Users continued to post detailed reviews of their experiences.
“So i had just under half a cc of the rig filled,” wrote MacMan after receiving Tony’s vacuum-sealed heroin in the mail. “Plunged that bitch down about halfway, felt a little burn, stopped there, pulled it out, because i started to feel the rush and didnt wanna overdue it. Got a wicked awesome rush, I would say the 1st or 2nd best H i have ever done. Also it is really hard for me to feel opiates when i have been taking methadone. And this dope of tonys, i didnt even feel like i had any methadone in my system!!! It was awesome. Still havent gotten Nuc’s, but best i have tried here on SR. Fuck, if i didnt have that methadone in my system, i probably would have fucking came everywhere.”
By February, over 100 customers had posted positive feedback. In early March, Tony publicly cancelled an order from an underage customer and received congratulations for his discretion.
“Wow, I guess this is what happens when you take the criminal element out of the equation,” wrote northsidepk. “Good job Nixon Era drug war on doing just the opposite.”
For his part, Tony was enjoying the adulation that came with running a highly successful and visible new business.
“Thanks guys! Love you all!”
Tony’s customers loved him back.
Continue reading ‘The top seller on the web’s biggest drug marketplace is gone — Weirder Web #2’
Filed under: Marketplaces | 3 Comments
Tags: Adrian Chen, Drugs, Gawker, Silk Road, Tony76
“Don’t lecture me about being new to contract killing.”
If there is a supply, is there necessarily a demand?
On a simple, anonymous and hidden forum called Underground Market Board 2.0 (UMB), a poster named Shadow wrote yesterday that he is a very experienced marksman looking for serious people to sell him weapons near New York City. That’s not a combination that usually ends happily for everyone involved.
“I sold almost all of my Rifles i used when i shot competitively,” wrote Shadow. “I’m planning doing Contracts so obviously I am need of new ones. Don’t lecture me about Being new to contract killing. I am fully aware of the consequences if i get caught.”
Shadow posted his advertisement on October 27, 2012 on the somewhat strange and hidden UMB in which anonymous users seek to buy and sell guns, stolen information, drugs and other illegal goods and services.
“Cash for kills” reads another post by BlueGuru. ”You want someone taken care of? Im your man. 10,000 within US. 20,000 international. No questions asked (besides all basic vital info for the job). prefer bitcoins for anonymity.”
Blue then provided his TorMail address, the anonymous email service of choice for the buyers and sellers on Underground Market Board.
Maybe UMB isn’t too strange. After all, the Tor-powered deep web bazaar seems common enough. The Silk Road is famous and the Hidden Wiki serves as a deep web travel guide by cataloging a dynamic set of forums and markets that speak about and sell contraband anonymously. Drugs especially are easy to buy online even if a little expensive compared to your local neighborhood hook up.
UMB is listed near the top of the popular Hidden Wiki, requires no registration (like, say, Silk Road does) and offers little in the way of conversation. Most posts are requests or offers for illegal goods plus an anonymous email to contact if one is interested.
Internet shopping is convenient, sure, but is a professional hit man really just a couple of clicks away?
Continue reading ‘A hit man advertises his services – Weirder Web #1’
Filed under: Marketplaces | 1 Comment
Tags: Deep web, Hidden Wiki, New York City, Silk Road, Underground Market Board
