[HN Gopher] Dark Web - Justice League
___________________________________________________________________
Dark Web - Justice League
Author : scottmessick
Score : 173 points
Date : 2022-01-12 20:17 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (analyst1.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (analyst1.com)
| flatiron wrote:
| I live in NJ where weed is legal but you can't buy it (legally)
| so we are sort of in a weird spot.
|
| anyway, it makes me really not care about ordering weed on the
| dark web from CA. if the feds catch it, its an ounce of weed to a
| residence, they don't care and im not gonna go in front of some
| federal judge on federal drug crimes. if CA or NJ catch it, its
| legal there, who cares.
|
| but the site I use uses an escrow system where if you don't get
| the product or if you aren't satisfied you can file a complaint.
| i've never used it as i always have gotten what i've ordered but
| it is pretty odd.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I used that and got my money back when a shipping didn't
| arrive.
|
| Also the quality and honesty of the sellers on the quantity
| they're selling you is great. It's beautiful to see how the
| market and a reputation system can work wonders, even among
| strangers with anonymised identities.
|
| The street experience equivalent is terrible. A friend of mine
| (who self medicated in one of the western totalitarian regimes
| who prohibit weed) got a bag of tea, tissues smelling like
| weed, he got a knife pulled on him, he got scammed in an
| elaborate plot which involved him keeping a bag of flour
| (supposedly coke) while the dealer supposedly went to get his
| weed for a 50, he had homeless dragging him to a gang of
| criminals under the pretence of buying weed. Eventually he
| found someone reliable, a middle aged father with a stable but
| low paying job and a family - but it's a miracle he's still
| alive.
| angryGhost wrote:
| if they seize any powder, they might come a knockin'!
| flatiron wrote:
| i only do weed and just gummies for my anxiety and only buy
| enough that its obviously personal use and not some weed
| gummy empire i'm starting.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I live in NJ where weed is legal but you can't buy it
| (legally) so we are sort of in a weird spot.
|
| Isn't there a service in Maine where you can pay psychics to
| find your lost weed and bring it back to you?
|
| https://www.incredibles.me/your-first-order-what-you-need-to...
|
| > If you have LOST your weed, please feel free to reach out to
| us! Your word is good enough for us. If you say you LOST IT, we
| will FIND IT, GUARANTEED or you pay nothing.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I love the creativity. Not sure how appreciative an old
| crusty judge would feel though
| msikora wrote:
| Wow, this is amazing! Did they get into any legal troubles?
| gime_tree_fiddy wrote:
| I thought NJ legalized to the level of CA, where you can there
| are dispensaries and stuff, no?
| klodolph wrote:
| It takes time from legalization to when businesses appear.
| Most states, it seems, at least a couple years.
| andrewxdiamond wrote:
| That time delay is due to needing to spontaneously build an
| entire supply chain for weed in-state, as it can't be moved
| across state borders. Farms, transportation, financing,
| retail space, zoning, regulations, and more.
|
| Takes a long time for weed to make it to consumers, but it
| also creates a huge local industry since everyone has to
| work within the state, at least when dealing directly with
| the product.
| [deleted]
| unixhero wrote:
| Kind of like the Vikings.
| vmception wrote:
| Do yourself a favor and demystify the dark web for yourself.
|
| Some of the best information is exclusively nestled in forums and
| marketplaces over there.
|
| If you rely on an incentive model of being caught in order to
| behave, something darknet doesnt offer, that says more about you
| than anyone else.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| I'm interested - how do I find it?
|
| Is there a guide? List of places to visit?
| vmception wrote:
| Typically over a Tor circuit I visit dark.fail and then
| switch to the onion url so that exit nodes arent being used
|
| Onion addresses frequently change so no use bookmarking them
|
| Dark.fail lists a variety of forums, marketplaces,
| marketplaces with forums, and their current addresses and
| whether those sites are up or down
|
| It also has links to a variety of mainstream media news
| sources and various government resources that you can browse
| on native onion routes
|
| Dread is the biggest forum, reddit clone. A variety of
| subreddits to hang out in and chat. It is often down though,
| at least compared to modern clearnet services.
| dewey wrote:
| You said that "Some of the best information" is on there.
| What would be an example of that?
|
| Every time when I was checking it out it was just
| marketplaces and otherwise just things I could find in the
| clearnet.
| vmception wrote:
| A lot of times its in the marketplaces or their forums. I
| mentioned an example good for me in another comment
| ggerganov wrote:
| Can you give a few examples of what sorts of information is
| best found in the dark web?
| vmception wrote:
| Typically how to use Tor and general OPSEC
|
| For the longest time the best information obfs4 bridges
| (which are one step in masking Tor use to your network and
| ISP) was most easily found on the Dread forum there.
| Fortunately TailsOS uses bridges by default now. But when
| troubleshooting on clearnet I typically only found out of
| date stuff on the Tor subreddit. Was useful and better for
| me.
| typon wrote:
| Tried it. Found mostly junk information and terrible people.
| Not worth the effort and time tbh
| vmception wrote:
| Depends on the site, time and listing. I'm sure someone in
| Myanmar is conflating their experience on Facebook with "the
| internet" too.
| zepto wrote:
| > If you rely on an incentive model of being caught in order to
| behave, something darknet doesnt offer, that says more about
| you than anyone else.
|
| People who rely on an incentive model _only_ are typically
| psychopaths or sociopaths.
|
| What you are saying is that Darknet has no mechanism for
| policing sociopaths, and therefore is likely to attract them.
| vmception wrote:
| Which has nothing to do with you or any specific persons use
| of onion services
| [deleted]
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| I'm curious about the dark web like I am with a lot of
| technology, but I've always been subject to a (perhaps self-
| imposed) chilling effect where I fear being "marked" simply for
| researching the tools. Am I just being paranoid/chicken?
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| I have little doubt that my ISP logs each time I connect to
| Tor. What happens to this information from that point? Who
| knows. I won't live in fear, as that is the same thing as
| oppression, only self-imposed.
| conductr wrote:
| I'd imagine you're also on some NSA lists. Depending on
| what's going on around you and what else you've done within
| the profile they've built for you they may be surveilling
| you a bit closer than they otherwise would be.
| vmception wrote:
| I would say chicken. There's lists for everything. You're
| afraid of lists and havent articulated the consequences.
| Cheetos10 wrote:
| smm11 wrote:
| And nobody wants to make a comment.
| 3np wrote:
| If you don't have anything worthwhile to say, better say
| nothing at all
| nashashmi wrote:
| This makes a whole lot of sense. How can a transaction happen if
| reputation is not vouched for or established? It is why crooks
| start building networks and start asking lots of questions about
| groups. Wherever there is a case of money , there is an angle for
| reputation building. For the more mature, they categorize this as
| acceptable losses.
| chris_wot wrote:
| Yeah, this will eventually go wrong. It's inevitable that someone
| will work out how to socially game this system.
| reggieband wrote:
| There is a comic I remember from my childhood, "Tom the Dancing
| Bug" written by Ruben Bolling. He had a character called "Harvey
| Richard, Lawyer for Children". I linked a couple of examples [1],
| [2], [3], [4] but the satire, IMO, is incredible. It lampoons
| humanities proclivity to layer pseudo-rationality onto the
| irrational things that we do.
|
| It also reminds me of the TV show "The Wire" when Stringer Bell,
| a senior member of a street drug distribution ring of urban
| thugs, forces them to conduct their meetings using Rules of
| Order. [5] If you watch to the end, you see that in those
| circumstances order means nothing, it is just a facade.
|
| I guess you could say that I'm cynical about the prospects of
| such a court and I tend to see the underlying truth in the
| satires that point it out.
|
| 1. https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2015/02/26
|
| 2. https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2014/12/25
|
| 3. https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/545850417313484171/
|
| 4. https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/178807047675716661/
|
| 5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO1zxPRRf4g
| swayvil wrote:
| To be considered a "sane adult" type person in our society you
| only need to 1) pay respect to the authorities of the hour 2)
| talk straight.
|
| I think that covers it.
|
| You could be a raving loon and a gibbering infant. Nobody will
| know it.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| Those comics were genius. Thanks for putting them together for
| us.
| JoelMcCracken wrote:
| These kinds of alternative justice systems always seem
| fascinating to me. I feel like a sociological study on
| "alternative forms of justice" could be very fruitful.
| jeffrwells wrote:
| There's a book I really enjoyed called Narconomics.
|
| It helps explain all aspects of the drug trade through the lens
| of business.
|
| One of the most fascinating takeaways was how they handle
| "contract enforcement" in the absence of a legal system or
| courts (hint: Violence)
|
| I recall an anecdote that Mexican cartels would hire Mexicans
| --- and not Dutch --- in order to serve as drug mules smuggling
| product into Amsterdam. Dutch mules would get caught less
| often, but Mexicans were much less likely to steal the drugs
| entirely. Because when you sign up to be a mule they take down
| the names and addresses of your entire family (nearby), and
| will kill them if you steal the product. Contract enforcement.
| joshmarlow wrote:
| Interestingly, Medieval Iceland had a polycentric legal system
| where you could sell the wrong done to you to someone who had
| more money to prosecute.
|
| There's an interesting discussion/description in "The Machinery
| of Freedom", a book about anarchocapitalism.
|
| It's freely available online -
| http://www.daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf
| joshuaissac wrote:
| That sounds similar to creditors selling the right to collect
| debt repayments to a debt collector, or patent holders
| selling their patents to a patent enforcement company or
| patent troll (usually the same).
| ruined wrote:
| >legal system where you could sell the wrong done to you to
| someone who had more money to prosecute.
|
| and now we just have contingency
| _0ffh wrote:
| The (consequentialist-)anarchist economist David Friedman (son
| of Milton) wrote a book about this very topic!
|
| I hope you'll find it as interesting as I did!
|
| Book:
| http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Legal%20Systems/LegalSystemsCo...
|
| Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOB2qxRO5vQ
|
| [Ed. Seems I'm late, but I'll leave the comment up for the
| video link.]
| tgb wrote:
| You might enjoy "Legal Systems Very Different From Ours" by
| David Friedman.
| WFHRenaissance wrote:
| Fun little rabbit-hole for you to dive into:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycentric_law
| Fenrisulfr wrote:
| There's been some good research into the history of legal
| systems. See David Friedman's book Legal Systems Very Different
| From Ours [1]. There's a small section about prisoners. But a
| new chapter could definitely be written about cyber-criminals!
|
| [1]
| http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Legal%20Systems/LegalSystemsCo...
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| +1 for this fascinating read. As soon as I read the GP's
| comment I wanted to link this.
| cs702 wrote:
| "Meet the new boss: same as the old boss." - The Who
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDfAdHBtK_Q
|
| Actually, I suspect the new "bosses" of the dark web's newfangled
| justice system are in fact _much worse_ than the old "bosses" of
| the traditional justice system -- also known as judges and
| lawyers.
| papito wrote:
| This just shows that people naturally gravitate toward a system
| of social harmony and the rule of law, as it lets you reasonably
| adjust your behavior, as the expectations are formalized, and
| everyone else is assumed to be abiding by them.
|
| The irony is that _real_ world is increasingly moving away from
| that, toward the "everyone for themselves, nothing matters"
| chaos.
| justicezyx wrote:
| Words are thoughts. Thoughts are mental processes. Be careful
| with treating similarity in appearance with equivalence in
| substance.
|
| > social harmony and the rule of law
|
| The association between the story and social harmony seems
| plausible, but actually superficial.
|
| Social harmony would be that people involuntarily work together
| without an authority, and reached mutual agreement on their
| dispute. To me, it is a sign of social conflicts that dark web
| actors need arbitration.
|
| Although that by itself matches our impression that dark web
| actors are lawless individuals should be punished. More
| ironically, the story actually shows that they are not lawless
| in the absolute sense. They just breakd the laws majority of
| the society abides by (or the majority actually do not even
| realize exits).
|
| > rule of law
|
| You know, rule of law is more of a political term nowadays. It
| refers to a western style of political organization framework
| centered on written laws and a voting process to revising them,
| and many other subtle details.
|
| Is arbitration on darkweb an example of rule by law?
|
| I tend to say no. Arbiter is necessary in all steps, and they
| seem are not codifying their "laws" for dealing with the future
| occrance of similar litigation at all.
| papito wrote:
| Well, obviously, this is almost a metaphor, as it's a stretch
| to literally apply the term Rule of Law to something as
| sketchy as the dark web. Also, note that I did not use
| something like "Law and Order", as that can have a pretty
| unpleasant meaning.
| heavyarms wrote:
| There's a good book by Kevin Poulsen called "The Kingpin: How one
| Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground" that
| is a bit out of date at this point (2011), but it goes into great
| length on all of the dynamics of the early forums where all of
| carding/spam/botnet operators did business.
|
| In a forum/marketplace like this, your reputation is worth a lot
| of money. And if you scam someone and get banned, sure, you can
| just join again under a new identity, but building your
| reputation up again means you will lose out on a lot of potential
| sales.
| devwastaken wrote:
| No ability to enforce makes it moot. At most you get banned from
| the forum.
| edwnj wrote:
| You're doing shady stuff with some fucked up people and it
| could be anybody incl the feds so reputation is invaluable.
|
| I imagine its like ratings on ebay but much much higher stakes.
| bowmessage wrote:
| Mute? Or moot?
| flubert wrote:
| "When the parties agreed, they could lay their dispute before
| the moot, whose members, much like present-day mediators,
| attempted to facilitate an accommodation that the disputing
| parties found acceptable. When reached, such accommodations
| resolved the dispute in a way that preserved the peace of the
| community."
|
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=586941
|
| This is like a buy-one-get-one-free comment, not only is the
| above about evolved dispute resolution systems, it mention
| the moot.
| devwastaken wrote:
| Autocorrect.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Yes a blockchain escrow with this judge as the decider of how
| the funds are apportioned would be better.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| Not surprising at all. Most criminal organisations, especially
| larger ones have these mechanisms in place both for internal and
| external situations. For instance if there are two gangs with
| overlapping territories,disputes start and can get escalated very
| quickly into situations where each side is focusing on fighting
| instead of bringing on money. Sometimes the gang leaders would
| try to resolve it but often external help is required. Usually
| it's a well respected person by both sides who is impartial and
| has the necessary negotiation or political skills to make both
| sides happy. This is almost universal across the criminal world.
| motohagiography wrote:
| One wonders if being a judge on one of these cases would be
| illegal as well.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| I could see the logic for a judge being considered an
| accessory.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| Some enterprising prosecutor is probably, even now, getting
| ready to bring those judges in and depose them. They don't have
| any attorney-client privilege, and they certainly know all
| about some illegal activity.
| empressplay wrote:
| And the movie / TV series based on it is already in development,
| I imagine
| dS0rrow wrote:
| clearnet link to the complaint section of said forum:
| https://xss.is/threads/34768/
| csdvrx wrote:
| IRL this is called binding arbitration, and it's often opt-out
| for your ISP and cellphone provider.
|
| Most companies prefer this, as it's faster and more efficient
| than the judicial system.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| > it's faster and more efficient than the judicial system
|
| Only in theory, or maybe if you take averages. As soon as you
| give people rights (to see the evidence against them, to
| confront witnesses, etc.) you have to create processes to
| manage those rights, and it ends up resembling the judicial
| system.
|
| I had a friend go through a wrongful termination arbitration,
| and it took two years. Lawyers were present on both sides; the
| larger party could (and did) stretch out the process so as to
| bankrupt the smaller one; settlement negotiations were
| interminable. It's not clear to me that a court case would have
| been appreciably longer.
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| It's a bit more specific than just being "faster" and "more
| efficient". There's two main advantages:
|
| First, waiver of class-action rights. This is a big deal
| because there's a cottage industry of enterprising lawyers who
| do find a couple main plaintiffs, generate a suit on behalf of
| a large class against a deep-pocketed defendant, and settle for
| something around a dollar per class member plus millions in
| legal fees.
|
| Second is a limitation on discovery and subpoena rights for
| plaintiffs. In a traditional court setting, you may be allowed
| to force a company to turn over _extensive_ communication
| records and other documents, corporate executives to testify or
| be deposed, and even burden non-party witnesses (eg, part
| suppliers).
|
| In many jurisdictions, companies that wish to use binding
| arbitration have to pay the entirety of the significant fees to
| fund the arbitration system (and in a timely manner). It's
| still worthwhile for them to do so, even if they aren't tipping
| the scales of justice one micrometer. With the exact same
| outcome as a court case, the arbitration fees are fully worth
| it to avoid discovery, better protect executives from being
| forced to testify, dodge class-action fishing expeditions, etc.
| matsemann wrote:
| True reason is of course that the arbitration courts side
| with those paying the bills. Otherwise they would have few
| repeat customers.
| t0suj4 wrote:
| If you can buy a judgement wouldn't people just refuse to
| be judged by such courts?
|
| The arbiter would risk losing all their customers.
| lovich wrote:
| When it's a take it or leave it agreement and every
| company has added it to their offers, there's not really
| a whole lot of choice
| AutumnCurtain wrote:
| See Epic v. Lewis
| null0pointer wrote:
| Is this anarchism? That being naturally emergent formal processes
| for things which would normally be handled by the
| government/legal system.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| Most anarchist theories revolve around formal power structures,
| just decentralized ones, but, they are all voluntary. This
| seems to be involuntary, as being are being "brought" to court.
| monocasa wrote:
| There doesn't seem to be an involuntary component; it's a
| virtual court so 'brought to court' just seems to mean that
| proceedings have started. You can simply not show up anymore
| and sort of self select for banishment (once again, from a
| purely virtual marketplace, not a physical location).
|
| Seems pretty anarchist to me.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| No. There would need to be many more meetings and countless
| committees from groups of random people who all acclaim to hold
| some sort of power.
| __blockcipher__ wrote:
| > There would need to be many more meetings and countless
| committees from groups of random people who all acclaim to
| hold some sort of power.
|
| That's a description of our statist status quo :)
| catillac wrote:
| I think that's the joke
| notdemo88 wrote:
| goodluckchuck wrote:
| Yeah, one might say the anarchists are forming a government.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I wouldn't say so. This is all opt-in, they're not forcing
| anyone.
|
| This is just a private dispute resolution system, not too
| dissimilar from what can be offered by private companies on
| clearnet (think eBay).
| RobertoG wrote:
| Maybe, but how do you distinguish it from the natural emergence
| of a government and legal system?
| mhitza wrote:
| By it being opt-in.
| Retric wrote:
| Closer to a gang style parallel government structure. The
| penalties are backed up by banishment from the group rather
| than violence.
| [deleted]
| _0ffh wrote:
| Yes, it's the free market taking over and providing a service
| that is in demand, in this case arbitration.
| csee wrote:
| I don't think it's naturally emergent. It's just another case
| of a centralized entity making some rules people need to follow
| or else they get banned. It's not too dissimilar from what
| would happen on eBay if someone complains about a seller.
| slibhb wrote:
| What if centralized authories are naturally emergent because
| individuals demand them?
| csee wrote:
| I'm happy to call it naturally emergent as long as we also
| call Amazon and eBay's policies naturally emergent, but
| doing that would be rather vacuous.
| mediocregopher wrote:
| Turns out, all of existence is naturally emergent.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Doesn't anarchism require no hierarchies? A court system is a
| hierarchy. So no. This isn't anarchism.
| Miner49er wrote:
| No, it requires no unjust or involuntary hierarchies. This is
| all voluntary, as far as I can tell.
| paxys wrote:
| It ceases to be anarchism the moment it becomes involuntary.
| Otherwise it's just another system of authority.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Isn't any system of governance in a given region (geographic,
| or virtual) involuntary? Unless you just mean "you can leave
| if you don't like it," but that's true for all systems of
| governance.
| joshgrib wrote:
| Not an expert on the topic, but my understanding is that
| anarchy rejects governance in general - there wouldn't be
| any "elevated decision-making body". It's not as much "you
| can leave if you don't like it" as it's "if you're here
| then you can change things".
|
| I'm not prepared to defend this but that's the view - if
| you have a system of governance it isn't anarchy so if the
| argument is "all systems of governance are at least
| partially involuntary" then that may be true but doesn't
| say anything related to anarchy
| tshaddox wrote:
| When I say "governance" I mean in the broadest sense
| possible: the ways in which interactions between people
| are organized. If there's a better term for this I will
| happily use it!
| notch656a wrote:
| Yes, that is why many anarchists consider government a
| coercive system and seek alternatives to that coercion. Of
| course, coercion can't be eliminated, but we can
| acknowledge the right of legitimate self defense against
| that coercion.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| > "you can leave if you don't like it," but that's true for
| all systems of governance.
|
| Is it? Can you just leave North Korea if you please?
| tshaddox wrote:
| Okay, fair enough. It's true for _most_ systems of
| governance.
| joshgrib wrote:
| The best explanation of anarchy I've heard is by debunking
| the common view that people think anarchy is when a a
| disaster happens and a warlord takes over - but it's really
| when a disaster happens and neighbors start checking on each
| other to make sure everyone is alright and see if anyone
| needs help. If the community isn't voluntarily doing it then
| it isn't anarchy
| notch656a wrote:
| During Katrina the war lords did come in, and then
| proceeded to disarm and take legally owned guns in private
| residence [0].
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf8trl69kzo&t=60s
| mediocregopher wrote:
| I wouldn't describe this as involuntary. The losing party can
| simply leave (be banished) at any point, rather than face the
| consequences prescribed by the group. There's no threat of
| violence or imprisonment, at least as described in this
| article.
|
| If you take "involuntary" to mean "faced with consequences
| for one's actions within a group", then maybe it is
| involuntary, but that's not how the word is used with
| relation to anarchism as I've seen it.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Every system ends up needing:
|
| - trust
|
| - rules
|
| - enforcement
|
| I'm not even surprised such a system exists, because full anarchy
| where no one trusts anyone is not good even in theory.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| This is a common misconception. Anarchy doesn't stand for
| "without rules", it stands for "without ruler".
|
| The idea behind is to get rid of centralised, corruptible
| bottlenecks and decentralise decision and rule making.
|
| There are different models and theories on how that could work
| (The Machinery of Freedom gets quoted often) and zero interest
| from any politician to push for it; the appeal of getting into
| politics is having power - and a model where politicians should
| give away all of it is obviously not very popular with career
| politicians.
| Miner49er wrote:
| > full anarchy
|
| I know what you mean, but it's unfortunate that anarchism is
| sometimes a synonym for "no rules" when it doesn't mean that at
| all. I think this system is actually very anarchist.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| Right. I used to think this as well. In its most basic form,
| it means no ruler. I view anarchism as the ultimate counter
| to authoritarianism. The older I get, the more it becomes
| apparent to me that all of our world governments are
| authoritarian to a degree, including supposed democratic
| ones, and there seems to be this arbitrary threshold of "ok
| now we call this regime authoritarian". But every government
| rules through multiple forms of coercion. Some are more
| authoritarian than others, but nonetheless, authoritarian.
| smokey_circles wrote:
| > Over the past few weeks the FBI, Department of Justice (DOJ),
| Interpol, and other international law enforcement agencies have
| worked together to incarcerate and indict ransomware threat
| actors. Through this effort, millions of dollars in ransom
| payments have been recovered.
|
| yet still, cryptocurrency gets blamed for all the ransomware.
| nevermind that clearly the law is able to find some course to
| take, or the unsolved cases unrelated unrelated crypto or any of
| the myriad of studies about why crime exists. no, the mere
| existence of monero is why we have international criminal
| syndicates. never happened with drug cartels or insider trading
| rings. heck even warlords are bitcoins fault.
|
| odd rant, I know, but the argument that "all that crypto does is
| encourage criminals" is willfully ignorant. tale as old as time.
|
| "what did they do before crypto then smartie pants"
|
| cash.
|
| and before that: gold. probably shiny rocks before that.
|
| we could try defeat these actors but honestly I am unable to
| believe it's just human nature. we suck sometimes
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| How do I send $1m in cash to Russia to pay the ransom? Or $1000
| for that matter?
| Animats wrote:
| Bitcoin, of course.
|
| Classically, kidnappers and extortionists were caught when
| the money passed. It was hard to find an untraceable way to
| do that. But with modern cryptocurrency technology, criminals
| have solved that problem.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Thats my point :-). Cash is too cumbersome and susceptible
| to MITM be that criminal, government or sunk boat.
| notch656a wrote:
| Narco submarine type scenario with sacrificial mule is one
| plausible scenario where very large cash collection might
| occur.
|
| -- Fictional Scenario --
|
| 1) You're told to meet the narco submarine at some abandoned
| waterway with cash
|
| 2) A mule in the narco-submarine takes the money. Mule
| doesn't know where he's going, just that he isn't going to
| see his family if he fails.
|
| 3) The mule is not told where to go until deep in
| international waters. GPS tracking ensures the mule is
| actually where he says.
|
| 4) Friendly fishing vessels radio assurances the submarine
| \is not being tracked, using GPS location
|
| 5) Destination sent to mule, deep in port in Columbia /
| Venezuela / whatever.
|
| 6) Cash unloaded deep in jungle and then funneled into local
| financial systems.
|
| ---------
|
| For smaller sums like $1000 no one is going to bother to
| investigate, I would imagine they would just tell you to mail
| to some abandoned house or whatever they're watching. If the
| money doesn't show up, it's treated as non-payment.
| strombofulous wrote:
| Are there any examples of widespread ransomware that demanded
| payment in cash, gold, or shiny rocks?
| gigaflop wrote:
| I think it was the norm for ransoms to be paid in gold or
| some kind of physical wealth back in the Y1K era.
| strombofulous wrote:
| That's true but the article is specifically talking about
| ransomware
| BlueGh0st wrote:
| Before crypto, it was Liberty Reserve and similar money-gram
| services and before/during/after that it was/is Green Dot and
| other gift cards.
| Kneecaps07 wrote:
| > Through this effort, millions of dollars in ransom payments
| have been recovered
|
| I'm curious about who gets this money? I certainly have never
| heard of a company getting their money back from the feds.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-01-12 23:00 UTC)