Silk Road (marketplace)

For the historical trade routes, see Silk Road.

Silk Road

Item description page
Web address http://silkroad6ownowfk.onion[1] (defunct)
Commercial Yes
Type of site
 Online market
Registration Required
Available in English
Owner Ross William Ulbricht[2][3] (pseudonym "Dread Pirate Roberts")[4]
Launched February 2011
Current status Shut down by FBI October 2013. Silk Road 2.0 shut down by FBI and Europol on 6 November 2014.[5] Silk Road 3.0 is online.[6]

Silk Road was an online black market and the first modern darknet market, best known as a platform for selling illegal drugs. As part of the dark web,[7] it was operated as a Tor hidden service, such that online users were able to browse it anonymously and securely without potential traffic monitoring. The website was launched in February 2011; development had begun six months prior.[8][9] Initially there were a limited number of new seller accounts available; new sellers had to purchase an account in an auction. Later, a fixed fee was charged for each new seller account.[10][11]

In October 2013, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) shut down the website[12] and arrested Ross William Ulbricht under charges of being the site's pseudonymous founder "Dread Pirate Roberts".[4] On 6 November 2013, Silk Road 2.0 came online, run by former administrators of Silk Road.[13] It too was shut down and the alleged operator was arrested on 6 November 2014 as part of the so-called "Operation Onymous”.

Ulbricht was convicted of seven charges related to Silk Road in U.S. Federal Court in Manhattan and was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.[14] Further charges alleging murder-for-hire remain pending in Maryland.[2][15][16]

History

Operations

Silk Road was founded in February 2011.[17] The name "Silk Road" comes from a historical network of trade routes started during the Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD) between Europe, India, China, and many other countries on the Afro-Eurasian landmass. Silk Road was operated by the pseudonymous "Dread Pirate Roberts" (named after the fictional character from The Princess Bride), who was known for espousing libertarian ideals and criticizing regulation.[4][18] Two other individuals were also closely involved in the site's growth and success, known as Variety Jones and Smedley.[19]

In June 2011, Gawker published an article about the site[20] which led to "Internet buzz"[17] and an increase in website traffic.[8] Once the site was known publicly, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer asked federal law enforcement authorities to shut it down, including the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Department of Justice.[21]

In February 2013, an Australian cocaine and MDMA ("ecstasy") dealer became the first person to be convicted of crimes directly related to Silk Road, after authorities intercepted drugs that he was importing through the mail, searched his premises, and discovered his Silk Road alias in an image file on his personal computer.[22] Australian police and the DEA have targeted Silk Road users and made arrests, albeit with limited success at reaching convictions.[20][23][24] In December 2013, a New Zealand man was sentenced to two years and four months in jail after being convicted of importing 15 grams of methamphetamine that he had bought on Silk Road.[25]

In May 2013, Silk Road was taken down for a short period of time by a sustained DDoS attack.[26] On 23 June 2013, it was first reported that the DEA seized 11.02 bitcoins, then worth $814, which the media suspected was a result of a Silk Road honeypot sting.[27][28][29]

The FBI have claimed that the real IP address of the Silk Road server was found via data leaked directly from the site's CAPTCHA,[30] but security researchers believe that the PHP login page was manipulated to output its $_SERVER variable and real IP following site maintenance reconfiguration.[31]

Arrest and trial of Ross Ulbricht

Image placed on original Silk Road after seizure of property by the FBI
Impact of the seizure on the USD/Bitcoin exchange rate

Ross Ulbricht was alleged by the FBI to be the founder and owner of Silk Road and the person behind the pseudonym "Dread Pirate Roberts". He was arrested on 2 October 2013 in San Francisco[12][32][33][34] at 3:15 p.m. PST[35] in Glen Park Library, a branch of the San Francisco Public Library.[35]

Ulbricht was indicted on charges of money laundering, computer hacking, conspiracy to traffic narcotics,[35][36] and attempting to have six people killed.[37] Prosecutors alleged that Ulbricht paid $730,000 to others to commit the murders, although none of the murders actually occurred.[37] Ulbricht ultimately was not prosecuted for any of the alleged murder attempts.[38]

The FBI initially seized 26,000 bitcoins from accounts on Silk Road, worth approximately $3.6 million at the time. An FBI spokesperson said that the agency would hold the bitcoins until Ulbricht's trial finished, after which the bitcoins would be liquidated.[39] In October 2013, the FBI reported that it had seized 144,000 bitcoins, worth $28.5 million, and that the bitcoins belonged to Ulbricht.[40] On 27 June 2014, the U.S. Marshals Service sold 29,657 bitcoins in 10 blocks in an online auction, estimated to be worth $18 million at current rates and only about a quarter of the seized bitcoins. Another 144,342 bitcoins were kept which had been found on Ulbricht's computer, roughly $87 million.[41] Tim Draper bought the bitcoins at the auction with an estimated worth of $17 million, to lend them to a bitcoin start-up called Vaurum which is working in developing economies of emerging markets.[42]

Ulbricht's trial began on 13 January 2015 in Federal Court in Manhattan.[43] At the start of the trial, Ulbricht admitted to founding the Silk Road website, but claimed to have transferred control of the site to other people soon after he founded it.[44] Ulbricht's lawyers contended that Dread Pirate Roberts was really Mark Karpelès, and that Karpelès set up Ulbricht as a fall guy.[45] However, Judge Katherine B. Forrest ruled that any speculative statements regarding whether Karpelès or anyone else ran Silk Road would not be allowed, and statements already made would be stricken from the record.[46]

In the second week of the trial, prosecutors presented documents and chat logs from Ulbricht's computer that, they said, demonstrated how Ulbricht had administered the site for many months, which contradicted the defense's claim that Ulbricht had relinquished control of Silk Road. Ulbricht's attorney suggested that the documents and chat logs were planted there by way of BitTorrent, which was running on Ulbricht's computer at the time of his arrest.[46]

On 4 February 2015, the jury convicted Ulbricht of seven charges,[15] including charges of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, and computer hacking. He faced 30 years to life in prison.[2][3] The government also accused Ulbricht of paying for the murders of at least five people, but there is no evidence that the murders were actually carried out, and the accusations never became formal charges against Ulbricht.[47][48]

During the trial, Judge Forrest received death threats. Users of an underground site called The Hidden Wiki posted her personal information there, including her address and Social Security number. Ulbricht's lawyer Joshua Dratel said that he and his client "obviously, and as strongly as possible, condemn" the anonymous postings against the judge. "They do not in any way have anything to do with Ross Ulbricht or anyone associated with him or reflect his views or those of anyone associated with him", Dratel said.[49]

In late March 2015, a criminal complaint issued by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California led to the arrest of two former federal agents who had worked undercover in the Baltimore Silk Road investigation of Ulbricht, former Drug Enforcement Administration agent Carl Mark Force IV and Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges.[50][51] The agents are alleged to have kept funds that Ulbricht transferred to them in exchange for purported information about the investigation.[50][52] The agents were charged with wire fraud and money laundering.[53]

On March 15, 2015, director/screenwriter Alex Winter debuted at the South by Southwest Film Festival a movie based on Silk Road. Deep Web gives the inside story of the arrest of Ross Ulbricht.[54]

In a letter to Judge Forrest before his sentencing, Ulbricht stated that his actions through Silk Road were committed through libertarian idealism and that "Silk Road was supposed to be about giving people the freedom to make their own choices" and admitted that he made a "terrible mistake" that "ruined his life".[55][56] On May 29, 2015, Ulbricht was given five sentences to be served concurrently, including two for life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.[57] He was also ordered to forfeit $183 million. Ulbricht’s lawyer Joshua Dratel said that he would appeal the sentencing and the original guilty verdict.[47]

Other trials

Dutch drug dealer 23-year-old Cornelis Jan "Maikel" Slomp[58] was found guilty for large scale selling of drugs through the Silk Road website and was sentenced in Chicago to 10 years in prison on 29 May 2015.[59][60] Dealer Steven Sadler was sentenced to five years in prison.[61][62]

Products

In March 2013, the site had 10,000 products for sale by vendors, 70% of which were drugs.[20][63] In October 2014, there were 13,756 listings for drugs, grouped under the headings stimulants, psychedelics, prescription, precursors, other, opioids, ecstasy, dissociatives, cannabis and steroids/PEDs.[8][17][64][65] Fake driver's licenses were also offered for sale.[66] The site's terms of service prohibited the sale of certain items.[17] This included child pornography, stolen credit cards, assassinations, and weapons of any type; other darknet markets such as Black Market Reloaded gained user notoriety because they were not as restrictive on these items as the Silk Road incarnations were.[63][67] There were also legal goods and services for sale, such as apparel, art, books, cigarettes, erotica, jewellery, and writing services. A sister site, called "The Armory", sold weapons (primarily guns) during 2012, but was shut down because of a lack of demand.[68][69]

Buyers were able to leave reviews of sellers' products on the site, and in an associated forum where crowdsourcing provided information about the best sellers and worst scammers.[70] Most products were delivered through the mail, with the site's seller's guide instructing sellers how to vacuum-seal their products to escape detection.[71]

Sales

A flowchart depicting Silk Road's payment system. Exhibit 113 A, entered into evidence at Ulbricht's trial.

Based on data from 3 February 2012 to 24 July 2012, an estimated $15 million in transactions were made annually on Silk Road.[72][73] Twelve months later, Nicolas Christin, the study's author, said in an interview that a major increase in volume to "somewhere between $30 million and $45 million" would not surprise him.[74] Buyers and sellers conducted all transactions with bitcoins (BTC), a cryptocurrency that provides a certain degree of anonymity.[75] Silk Road held buyers' bitcoins in escrow until the order had been received and a hedging mechanism allowed sellers to opt for the value of bitcoins held in escrow to be fixed to their value in US$ at the time of the sale to mitigate against Bitcoin's volatility. Any changes in the price of bitcoins during transit were covered by Dread Pirate Roberts.[76]

The complaint published when Ulbricht was arrested included information the FBI gained from a system image of the Silk Road server collected on 23 July 2013. It noted that, "From February 6, 2011 to July 23, 2013 there were approximately 1,229,465 transactions completed on the site. The total revenue generated from these sales was 9,519,664 Bitcoins, and the total commissions collected by Silk Road from the sales amounted to 614,305 Bitcoins. These figures are equivalent to roughly $1.2 billion in revenue and $79.8 million in commissions, at current Bitcoin exchange rates...", according to the September 2013 complaint, and involved 146,946 buyers and 3,877 vendors.[12] This statement was made to emphasize the importance of the operation, because in the years 2011-2013 the value of 9,519,664 Bitcoins was $0.2 billion.[77] According to information users provided upon registering, 30 percent were from the United States, 27 percent chose to be "undeclared", and beyond that, in descending order of prevalence: the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Canada, Sweden, France, Russia, Italy, and the Netherlands. During the 60-day period from 24 May to 23 July, there were 1,217,218 messages sent over Silk Road's private messaging system.[12]

Similar sites

The Farmer's Market was a Tor site similar to Silk Road, but which did not use bitcoins.[78] It has been considered a 'proto-Silk Road' but the use of payment services such as PayPal and Western Union allowed law enforcement to trace payments and it was subsequently shut down by the FBI in 2012.[70][79][80] Other sites already existed when Silk Road was shut down and The Guardian predicted that these would take over the market that Silk Road previously dominated.[81][82] Sites named 'Atlantis', closing in September 2013, and Project Black Flag, closing in October 2013, each stole their users' bitcoins.[13] In October 2013, the site named Black Market Reloaded closed down temporarily after the site's source code was leaked.[13] The market shares of various Silk Road successor sites were described by The Economist in May 2015.[83]

Book Club

The Silk Road has a Tor-based book club that continued to operate following the initial site's closure and even following an arrest of one of its members. Reading material included conspiracy theories and computer hacking.[84]

Direct successors

Silk Road 2.0

Alert placed on the Silk Road's homepage following its being seized by the U.S. government and European law enforcement

On 6 November 2013, administrators from the closed Silk Road relaunched the site, led by a new pseudonymous Dread Pirate Roberts, and dubbed it "Silk Road 2.0". It recreated the original site's setup and promised improved security.[13] The new DPR took the precaution of distributing encrypted copies of the site's source code to allow the site to be quickly recreated in the event of another shutdown.[85]

On 20 December 2013, it was announced that three alleged Silk Road 2.0 administrators had been arrested;[86] two of these suspects, Andrew Michael Jones and Gary Davis, were named as the administrators "Inigo" and "Libertas" who had continued their work on Silk Road 2.0.[87] Around this time, the new Dread Pirate Roberts abruptly surrendered control of the site and froze its activity, including its escrow system. A new temporary administrator under the screenname "Defcon" took over and promised to bring the site back to working order.[88]

On 13 February 2014, Defcon announced that Silk Road 2.0's escrow accounts had been compromised through a vulnerability in Bitcoin's protocol called "transaction malleability".[89] While the site remained online, all the bitcoins in its escrow accounts, valued at $2.7 million, were reported stolen.[89] It was later reported that the vulnerability was in the site's "Refresh Deposits" function, and that the Silk Road administrators had used their commissions on sales since 15 February to refund users who lost money, with 50 percent of the hack victims being completely repaid as of 8 April.[90]

On 6 November 2014, authorities with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Europol, and Eurojust announced the arrest of Blake Benthall, allegedly the owner and operator of Silk Road 2.0 under the pseudonym "Defcon", the previous day in San Francisco as part of Operation Onymous.[5][91]

Others

Following the closure of Silk Road 2.0 in November 2014, Diabolus Market renamed itself to 'Silk Road 3 Reloaded' in order to capitalise on the brand.[92]

In January 2015 'Silk Road Reloaded' launched on I2P with multiple cryptocurrency support and similar listing restrictions to the original Silk Road market.[93]

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Silk Road (marketplace).

References

Notes

  1. ↑ Love, Dylan (6 November 2013). "Silk Road 2.0". Business Insider. Retrieved 7 November 2013.
  2. 1 2 3 Benjamin Weiser, "Man Behind Silk Road Website Is Convicted on All Counts", New York Times, 4 February 2015.
  3. 1 2 Nicole Hong, "Silk Road Creator Found Guilty of Cybercrimes", Wall Street Journal, 4 February 2015.
  4. 1 2 3 Ars Technica, How the feds took down the Dread Pirate Roberts, 3 October 2013
  5. 1 2 Cook, James (6 November 2014). "The FBI Just Started A Second Wave Of Silk Road Arrests". BusinessInsider.com. Retrieved 6 November 2014.
  6. ↑ Kate Knibbs. "Silk Road 3 Is Already Up, But It's Not the Future of Darknet Drugs". Gizmodo. Gawker Media. Retrieved 2015-11-07.
  7. ↑ Lee, Nicole (8 February 2015). "Anonymity is dead and other lessons from the Silk Road trial". engadget.com. Retrieved 28 May 2015.
  8. 1 2 3 Justin Norrie; Asher Moses (12 June 2011). "Drugs bought with virtual cash". The Sydney Morning Herald. Fairfax Media. Retrieved 5 November 2011.
  9. ↑ Public statement from a Silk Road spokesperson 1 March 2011.
  10. ↑ Dread Pirate Roberts (26 June 2011). "New seller accounts". Silk Road forums. Retrieved 5 August 2013. [...] we shut down new seller accounts briefly, but have now opened them up again. This time, we are limiting the supply of new seller accounts and auctioning them off to the highest bidders. Our hope is that by doing this, only the most professional and committed sellers will have access to seller accounts. For the time being, we will be releasing one new seller account every 48 hours, though this is subject to change. If you want to become a seller on Silk Road, click "become a seller" at the bottom of the homepage, read the seller contract and the Seller's Guide, click "I agree" at the bottom, and then you'll be taken to the bidding page. Here, you should enter the maximum bid you are willing to make for your account upgrade. The system will automatically outbid the next highest bidder up to this amount. [...]
  11. ↑ Dread Pirate Roberts (1 July 2011). "New seller accounts". Silk Road forums. Retrieved 5 August 2013. [...] We received a threat from a very disturbed individual who said they would pose as a legitimate vendor, but send carcinogenic and poisonous substances instead of real products and because seller registration is open, they would just create a new account as soon as they got bad feedback. This was shocking and horrifying to us and we immediately closed new seller registration. Of course we need new sellers, though, so we figured that charging for new seller accounts would deter this kind of behavior. [...]
  12. 1 2 3 4 "Sealed Complaint 13 MAG 2328: United States of America v. Ross William Ulbricht" (PDF). 27 September 2014. Retrieved 27 January 2014.
  13. 1 2 3 4 Greenberg, Andy (30 October 2013). "'Silk Road 2.0' Launches, Promising A Resurrected Black Market For The Dark Web". Forbes. Retrieved 6 November 2013.
  14. ↑ Weiser, Benjamin (29 May 2015). "Ross Ulbricht, Creator of Silk Road Website, Is Sentenced to Life in Prison". The New Tork Times.
  15. 1 2 Mullin, Joe (4 February 2015). "Ulbricht guilty in Silk Road online drug-trafficking trial". Ars Technica. Retrieved 4 February 2015.
  16. ↑ McCoy, Terrence (26 January 2015). "The secret journal of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht". Washington Post. Washington Post. Retrieved 5 February 2015.
  17. 1 2 3 4 Gayathri, Amrutha (11 June 2011). "From marijuana to LSD, now illegal drugs delivered on your doorstep". International Business Times. Retrieved 13 April 2013.
  18. ↑ Greenberg, Andy (29 April 2013). "Collected Quotations Of The Dread Pirate Roberts, Founder Of Underground Drug Site Silk Road And Radical Libertarian". Forbes. Retrieved 2 August 2013.
  19. ↑ Cox, Joseph (10 September 2015). "These Are the Two Forgotton Architects of Silk Road".
  20. 1 2 3 Adrian Chen (1 June 2011). "The Underground Website Where You Can Buy Any Drug Imaginable". Gawker. Retrieved 15 June 2011.
  21. ↑ "Schumer Pushes to Shut Down Online Drug Marketplace". NBC New York. Associated Press. 5 June 2011. Retrieved 15 June 2011.
  22. ↑ Martinez, Fidel (5 February 2013). "Silk Road cocaine dealer pleads guilty". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 2 August 2013.
  23. ↑ Solon, Olivia (1 February 2013). "Police crack down on Silk Road following first drug dealer conviction Technology". WIRED. Retrieved 19 April 2013.
  24. ↑ Whippman, Ruth (12 June 2011). "Bitcoin: the hacker currency that's taking over the web". The Guardian. Guardian News and Media. Retrieved 5 November 2011.
  25. ↑ Galuszka, Jono (14 December 2013). "Silk Road to jail for meth importer". Manawatu Standard. Retrieved 1 July 2014.
  26. ↑ Foxton, Willard (1 May 2013). "The online drug marketplace Silk Road is collapsing – did hackers, government or Bitcoin kill it?". The Telegraph. Retrieved 5 August 2013.
  27. ↑ Cohen, Brian (23 June 2013). "Users Bitcoins Seized by DEA". Let's Talk Bitcoin!. Retrieved 26 October 2013.
  28. ↑ Biggs, John (27 June 2013). "The DEA Seized Bitcoins In A Silk Road Drug Raid". TechCrunch. Retrieved 19 October 2013.
  29. ↑ Jeffries, Adrianne (26 June 2013). "Drug Enforcement Administration seizes 11 Bitcoins from alleged Silk Road dealer". The Verge. Retrieved 20 October 2013.
  30. ↑ Krebs, Brian (2 October 2014). "Silk Road Lawyers Poke Holes in FBI’s Story". Retrieved 9 August 2015.
  31. ↑ Cubrilovic, Nik (7 September 2014). "Analyzing the FBI’s Explanation of How They Located Silk Road". Retrieved 9 August 2015.
  32. ↑ Flitter, Emily (2 October 2013). "FBI shuts alleged online drug marketplace Silk Road". Reuters. Retrieved 2 October 2013.
  33. ↑ Ball, James; Arthur, Charles (2 October 2013). "Alleged Silk Road website founder arrested by police in San Francisco". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 October 2013.
  34. ↑ "Attorney denies California man ran drug website". The Post-Star. 4 October 2013. Retrieved 6 October 2013. "We deny all charges. That's the end of the discussion", said federal public defender Brandon LeBlanc, who is representing defendant Ross Ulbricht.
  35. 1 2 3 Mac, Ryan (2 October 2013). "Who Is Ross Ulbricht? Piecing Together The Life Of The Alleged Libertarian Mastermind Behind Silk Road [Page 2]". Forbes. Retrieved 19 December 2013.
  36. ↑ Gilbert, David (10 October 2013). "Alleged Silk Road Operator Ross Ulbricht Denies he is Dread Pirate Roberts". International Business Times. Retrieved 19 December 2013.
  37. 1 2 "Silk Road founder Ross William Ulbricht denied bail". The Guardian. 21 November 2013. Retrieved 19 December 2013.
  38. ↑ 22, Patrick Howell O'Neill in October; 2014. "The mystery of the disappearing Silk Road murder charges". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 5 February 2015.
  39. ↑ "The FBI's Plan For The Millions Worth Of Bitcoins Seized From Silk Road". Forbes.com. 4 October 2013. Retrieved 7 October 2013.
  40. ↑ "FBI Says It's Seized $28.5 Million In Bitcoins From Ross Ulbricht, Alleged Owner Of Silk Road". Forbes.com. 25 October 2013. Retrieved 25 October 2013.
  41. ↑ SVENSSON, Peter (13 June 2014). "US Marshals to Auction Seized Bitcoin". ABCnews (ABC). Retrieved 13 June 2014.
  42. ↑ Hill, Kashmir (2 July 2014). "Silk Road Bitcoin Auction Winner Tim Draper Won't Say How Many Millions He Paid". Forbes. Retrieved 8 July 2014.
  43. ↑ "Silk Road stunner: Ulbricht admits founding the site, but says he isn’t DPR". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2015-11-07.
  44. ↑ Mullin, Joe (13 January 2015). "Silk Road stunner: Ulbricht admits founding the site, but says he isn’t DPR". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2015-11-07.
  45. ↑ Mullin, Joe (15 January 2015). "Defense bombshell in Silk Road trial: Mt. Gox founder "set up" Ulbricht". Ars Technica. Retrieved 30 January 2015.
  46. 1 2 Bush, John (28 January 2015) "Recapping Week Two of the Silk Road Trial. TechCrunch. (Retrieved 30 Jan 2015).
  47. 1 2 Nicole Hong, "Silk Road Founder Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison", Wall Street Journal, May 29, 2015.
  48. ↑ Andy Greenberg, "Silk Road Creator Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison", Wired, May 29, 2015.
  49. ↑ Calder, Rich (24 October 2014). "EXCLUSIVE Hackers want judge's blood NY 'Silk Road' death threats". The New York Post (The New York Post). Retrieved 11 February 2015.
  50. 1 2 Two US agents charged over Silk Road. The Financial Times. Retrieved on March 31, 2015.
  51. ↑ In Silk Road Appeal, Ross Ulbricht’s Defense Focuses on Corrupt Feds. Wired.com. Retrieved April 11, 2016
  52. ↑ Federal Agents Accused of Stealing $1M in Online Currency. The New York Times via The Associated Press. Retrieved on March 31, 2015.
  53. ↑ Federal Agents Charged With Stealing Digital Currency. The New York Times via The Associated Press. Retrieved on March 31, 2015.
  54. ↑ John DeFore, "'Deep Web': SXSW Review", The Hollywood Reporter, March 20, 2015.
  55. ↑ Snyder, Benjamin (27 May 2015). "Silk Road mastermind pleads for light sentence". Fortune. Retrieved 31 May 2015.
  56. ↑ Allen, Nick (30 May 2015). "Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht sentenced to life in prison". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 31 May 2015.
  57. ↑ Sam Thielman, "Silk Road operator Ross Ulbricht sentenced to life in prison", The Guardian, May 29, 2015.
  58. ↑ "Nederlandse Silk Road-handelaar riskeert 40 jaar cel". emerce.nl. 2014-04-26. Retrieved 2015-05-30.
  59. ↑ "Nederlandse internetdrugsbaron krijgt in VS 10 jaar cel". nos.nl. 2015-05-29. Retrieved 2015-05-29.
  60. ↑ Jon Seidel (28 May 2015). "World's most prolific online drug dealer 'Supertrips' gets 10 years". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 30 May 2015.
  61. ↑ "The final confessions of a Silk Road kingpin". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 7 November 2015.
  62. ↑ "Silk Road drug dealer who cooperated, then fled, sentenced to five years". Ars Technica. Retrieved 7 November 2015.
  63. 1 2 James Ball (22 March 2013). "Silk Road: the online drug marketplace that officials seem powerless to stop". The Guardian.
  64. ↑ Anonymous (1 January 2012). "Silk Road: A Vicious Blow to the War on Drugs". The Austin Cut. Retrieved 30 October 2012.
  65. ↑ Davis, Joshua (10 October 2011). "The Crypto-Currency". The New Yorker. Condé Nast. p. 62. Retrieved 5 November 2011.
  66. ↑ Hong, Nicole (2015-05-29). "Silk Road Founder Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2015-05-30.
  67. ↑ Amrutha Gayathri (11 June 2011). "From marijuana to LSD, now illegal drugs delivered on your doorstep". International Business Times.
  68. ↑ Adrian Chen (27 January 2012). "Now You Can Buy Guns on the Online Underground Marketplace". Gawker.
  69. ↑ Justin Porter (6 August 2012). "Silk Road’s "The Armory" Terminated". Bitcoin Magazine.https://bitcoinmagazine.com/1990/not-ready-silk-roads-the-armory-terminated/
  70. 1 2 Mike Power (2 May 2013). "Your Crack's in the Post". Drugs 2.0: The Web Revolution That's Changing How the World Gets High. Granta Publications. pp. 211–237. ISBN 978-1-84627-461-9.
  71. ↑ "The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 1". WIRED. April 2015. Retrieved 2015-06-09.
  72. ↑ Christin, Nicolas (May 2013). "Traveling the Silk Road: A Measurement Analysis of a Large Anonymous Online Marketplace" (PDF). Carnegie Mellon INI/CyLab. Retrieved 1 August 2013.
  73. ↑ Brito, Jerry (9 April 2013). "Bitcoin vs. Big Government". Reason. Retrieved 1 August 2013.
  74. ↑ Howell O'Neill, Patrick (13 July 2013). "How big is the Internet's most notorious black market?". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 1 August 2013.
  75. ↑ "Bitcoin Anonymity"
  76. ↑ Greenberg, Andy (16 April 2013). "Founder Of Drug Site Silk Road Says Bitcoin Booms And Busts Won't Kill His Black Market". Forbes. Retrieved 1 August 2013.
  77. ↑ "Bitcoin trend 2011-2014". 27 September 2014. Retrieved 27 January 2014.
  78. ↑ Lisa Vaas (23 April 2012). "Tor-hidden online narcotics store, 'The Farmer's Market', brought down in multinational sting". Sophos. Retrieved 18 October 2013.
  79. ↑ "US busts online drugs ring Farmer's Market". BBC News. 17 April 2012. Retrieved 18 October 2013.
  80. ↑ "Black Market Drug Site 'Silk Road' Booming: $22 Million In Annual Sales". Forbes. 8 June 2012. Retrieved 18 October 2013.
  81. ↑ Alex Hern (18 October 2013). "Silk Road replacement Black Market Reloaded briefly closed". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 October 2013.
  82. ↑ Samuel Gibbs (3 October 2013). "Silk Road underground market closed – but others will replace it". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 October 2013.
  83. ↑ "Silk Road successors". The Economist. May 29, 2015. Retrieved 2015-05-30.
  84. ↑ Isaacson, Betsy (31 January 2014). "The Deep Web Is Filled With Drugs, Porn And ... Book Lovers(!)". Retrieved 18 October 2015.
  85. ↑ Grenberg, Andy (6 December 2013). "New Silk Road Drug Market Backed Up To '500 Locations In 17 Countries' To Resist Another Takedown". Forbes.com. Retrieved 30 December 2013.
  86. ↑ Greenberg, Andy (20 December 2013). "At Least Two Moderators Of 'Silk Road 2.0' Drug Site Forums Arrested". Forbes.com. Retrieved 30 December 2013.
  87. ↑ Greenberg, Andy (20 December 2013). "Feds Indict Three More Alleged Employees Of Silk Road's Dread Pirate Roberts". Forbes.com. Retrieved 30 December 2013.
  88. ↑ Berkman, Fran (30 December 2013). "New Dread Pirate Roberts Abandons Ship on Silk Road 2.0". Mashable. Retrieved 1 January 2014.
  89. 1 2 Brandom, Russell (13 February 2014). "The Silk Road 2 has been hacked for $2.7 million". The Verge. Retrieved 14 February 2014.
  90. ↑ Joseph Cox (22 April 2014). "How Silk Road Bounced Back from Its Multimillion-Dollar Hack". Vice magazine. Defcon told me that staff concluded there was a vulnerability in the “Refresh Deposits” function of the site. Using this, the hacker was able to spam the link and exponentially credit their account with more and more bitcoins, taking them out of the section of Silk Road that stored the currency while it was being traded... According to Silk Road staff members, 50 percent of the hack victims had been completely repaid as of April 8, and users themselves have been continually reporting payments since the breach, posting on the site forum when they receive their payment. Since February 15, the administration of the site has not made any commissions on sales. Instead, every time a purchase is made, a five percent slice of the cost goes directly into the account of a randomly determined hack victim.
  91. ↑ Pepitone, Julianne (6 November 2014). "FBI Arrests Alleged 'Silk Road 2.0' Operator Blake Benthall". NBC News. Retrieved 6 November 2014.
  92. ↑ Price, Rob (7 November 2014). "We spoke to the shady opportunist behind Silk Road 3.0". Retrieved 30 May 2015.
  93. ↑ Cox, Joseph (11 January 2015). "'Silk Road Reloaded' Just Launched on a Network More Secret than Tor". Retrieved 9 August 2015.

Further reading

External links

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