[blackhatcat]

Ik it was something like that, even though everyone was like "omg feds ub3rpwnd him nobody safe omg omg". They'd have not caught shit without him letting them.

The real reason he got caught was because he didn't set up his Tor hidden service properly, it accepted traffic from both clearnet and Tor. Meaning that literally anyone with zmap (or any other mass scanner) scanning the entire ipv4 address space could have technically been able to find out the IP of silkroads server. Getting the IP was what allowed the feds to get physical access to his server but if DPR kept his opsec game strong it wouldn't even have mattered if they had physical access because there wouldn't have been anything tied to it that could have been used to identify him.

[w00t]

DPR got caught because he was really exceptionally poor at not posting things "subtly" about the Silk Road, and had multiple fake IDs shipped to his home address at once.

On top of that, Silk Road itself was poorly configured, and leaked it's IP to the FBI( and anyone else looking ).

Perhaps most egregious, though, was that he didn't have his personal systems properly encrypted, and he didn't delete incriminating logs as soon as they were no longer absolutely critical. This meant that, once he got arrested, he didn't have a chance.

[Eclipse]

Whoa. Thread derailed. Could this be cleaned up?

@roger_smith

[roger_smith]

Cleaned up the worst of it. Anymore derailment will result in warning levels.

[mothered]

Every VPN & Proxy Is paranoid. Period.

As long as you're using "your" ISP to connect, your anonymity Is not 100% concealed, not matter what tools and methodologies you utilize.

Sure, VPNs and such certainly protect your Identity, but you must take Into account "where" the connection originated. If the proper authorities exhaust all avenues via the correct channels, you can and will be traced. Even though (for example) offshore VPNs state they don't keep logs, to protect themselves from possible litigation, logs are stored.