Silk Road OPSEC

I use this subreddit alot, and ive read multiple times that the OPSEC when SR1 was the prime market was very very weak. Like users wouldn't encrypt their data and send sensitive information without any encryption among other things. I wasn't a user when SR1 was open so I have a couple question: Why didn't users make the most of their abilities to remain as anonymous as possible? Has the aura, or mood, of DNM"S changed after the fall of Silk Road?

Thank you


Comments


[4 Points] k9atemybuds:

People learn as they go man. Also things didn't have the exposure they do now. It was like magic for awhile and now a lot of people see the trick and the magic isn't so magical. Still though with more people in your safer in a way surrounded by so many decreases the chances of being picked out.


[3 Points] DNMd:

People felt untouchable. Before the gawker shitstorm it was pretty low key


[2 Points] EZPeeVee:

Yeah, what DNMd said, before Gawker we were pretty much underground, nobody really gave a fuck. Shortly thereafter Pam Bondi and Eric Holder had something to say aout the Road and we knew it was on. Before that a lot of us used encrypted email services that we paid for, like Countermail.

The whole debacle in Washington with Nod just goes to show that even with good OPSEC as far as computers were concerned, the government would profile domestic packages and track back wards, at least that's what they claim.

I'll tell you something funny about Nod. My normal username has been around a long long time. Every once in awhile I'd have an extra bit of coin and buy either a few points of smack or speed, my little secret.

Every time I hit up Nod while he was under police pressure (unbeknownst to us) he'd turn me down and send back my coin. I think I must have really good Karma.


[2 Points] None:

How many people here walked into a CVS with a hat with LED lights taped to them and wore sunglasses and used Bitinstant with an alias and felt like a secret agent?

Nananananananananabatman.


[1 Points] pinkprincess1:

It all TOTALLY changed.

SR1 was a completely different time. The community was very, very tight, scamming was rare and dealt with (that's why people still talk about Tony76, because he was a community member who was one of the first big scammers). People genuinely believed that it would never fall. There wasn't the same amount of paranoia about compromised vendors and honeypots as there are now, because people thought that TOR was too strong and SR was too well hidden to ever be seized - you have to remember, the freedom hosting stuff hadn't happened at this point either.

Also you never really heard about or talked about OPSEC at the start, not like you do now anyway.

Now, people half expect that the markets will be seized at one point or another. In SR1 early days, it wasn't even thought about.


[1 Points] melan85:

read Eileen Ormsby's "Silk Road" book. Its pretty spot on about everything.