OpSec on the Silk Road: Learning from Pirates

Only a couple of weeks ago, Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR) was arrested for his extensive involvement in Silk Road [1], an online platform only reachable via Tor offering more than ten-thousand sales listings for controlled substances. The variety of the products offered was immense: LSD, cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, ecstasy – if you can name it, it was most likely for sale on Silk Road. You could have considered Silk Road something like eBay for illegal drug trafficking. You could find almost everything and even leave a seller feedback once the transaction was done and over. But not only drugs were sold on Silk Road: Hacked accounts for social networks, weapons, and various services ranging from digital petty theft to more extreme things, contract killers being just one of the more unsettling examples. Ross William Ulbricht, DPR’s real name, allegedly made millions with his website. The actual amount is disputed, but it is to be assumed that it was worth the troubleThis paper was written in 2013 as part of a research project at scip AG, Switzerland. It was initially published online at https://www.scip.ch/en/?labs.20131024 and is available in English and German. Providing our clients with innovative research for the information technology of the future is an essential part of our company culture