[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.