The fall of the Silk Road: The Aftermath

So, the silk road has fallen and its so called leader, the Dread Pirate Roberts (hereafter referred to as DPR) is in FBI custody awaiting arraignment. I can't help but wonder what the repercussions are of this development in terms of TOR anonymity and security and also how it sits as an incident in the continued spectacular and catastrophic failure of "The War on Drugs".

No doubt the FBI and other involved law enforcement groups are giving themselves a collective slap-on-the-back right now. They did, after all, take down a site that may have generated upwards of $80 million in illegal revenue in the two and a half years it was online. In the process of taking it down it has been reported that they seized $3.6 million in Bitcoins - which may have been DPR's commission earnings from the site. Taking this many coins out of circulation is no small blip especially considering there is a finite supply on the open marketplace. The reality is, however, that this is not a large bust in the grand scheme of things and is designed more to frighten inhabitants of the dark web who think they can discreetly and anonymously involve themselves in illegal trade without consequences. Right now, on the Silk Road forums, a lot of the site's former vendors are scurrying away to the nether regions of the TOR network to lie low or, in some cases, giving up their trade altogether. As for the site's moderators, who were reportedly paid between $1000 and $2000 a week - many have gone into hiding, not surprisingly fearing for their safety.

A lot of questions have arisen now that the news of the bust has settled. Namely, what will the FBI's next move be? They have already taken an image of the site's server and have had this in their possession since July 2013. No doubt they will be examining the server for clues relating to the location of the site's vendors and those who did not encrypt their communications using PGP or Privnote are probably wondering when the knock on the door is coming.

And what about the site buyers? Will the FBI be drilling down into this data and passing on what they find to police authorities across the world or will the sheer task of trying to piece together the ebb and flow of Bitcoin transactions amongst what is estimated to be nearly 1 million users prove too overwhelming and beyond their resources? We can only guess and over time I am sure the picture will become more complete.

It seems that DPR made some catastrophic errors of judgement in terms of concealing his identity, especially in the early days of trying to promote the web site - leading the feds to a simple gmail address and, ultimately, to the identity of the man himself. This seems inconceivable from someone who was so concerned about keeping a tight ship in terms of the site security and safety of its vendors and customers. Why didn't he practice what he preached? Well, to a great extent he probably did but he got sloppy and careless when it came to covering his tracks which lead to his undoing.

As I have already mentioned above, at the time of writing the Silk Road forums are still open and full of confused souls trying to make sense of the fallout from the site's collapse. Questions are being raised as to how truly anonymous the site's transactions were. It is alleged that once an order was marked as shipped by a vendor, the buyer's address was deleted from the server. It is not inconceivable however that this data could be recovered by law enforcement and possibly used to justify a raid or ten. Also, questions are being asked about how truly anonymous you can remain on the darknet as a result of this raid. Although the smartest buyers and vendors encrypted communications using PGP, even the strength of this encryption method is being called into question by some forum users in the current atmosphere of paranoia.

"Maybe the NSA have cracked PGP already?", wrote one user.
"We should be worried," wrote another.

How worried they should be remains open to debate for now. There will always be those who take their digital security so seriously as to be ultra careful when it comes to concealing their online identity and covering their tracks. So much so that it would prove futile, expensive and time consuming to try and uncover them. Unfortunately for the million or so users of the Silk Road, the Dread Pirate Roberts wasn't one of them.