Fixxx
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IT'S F*CKING IMPOSSIBLE TO HIDE COMPLETELY IN THE DARKNET!
Do you think it's impossible to find someone in the darknet cause you can't "trace him by IP"?
Think again about it! I'll tell you how people are identified in the dark segment of the internet.
The darknet is teeming with offers for illegal deals and those willing to participate in them. It's very naive to think that law enforcement agencies ignore it. Operating in the darknet through Tor, sellers of weapons, drugs and other illicit goods conceal their identities. But buyers have the same right. As a result, the seller doesn't know who they're trading with. However, buyers are also not immune to fake sellers. Police often conduct "control purchases". Representatives of law enforcement gain trust with sellers, place several orders and suggest meeting up. Next come clean methods of social engineering, surveillance of delivery service records and so on catching them "in the act". No high technology involved. Anyone could turn informant - a supposed friend, neighbor, colleague, disgruntled ex. You don't have to look far for examples. The founder of the largest darknet marketplace Silk Road was caught due to his forgetfulness. Ross Ulbricht managed to hide and encrypt himself well but he slipped up by using the same nickname he had used on old forums where he had previously posted a job vacancy for another project. That's it! Ulbricht was arrested in a library where he was sitting with his laptop on Silk Road under an administrator account. They also traced a package containing nine fake documents that Ulbricht planned to use to rent servers for Silk Road and they discovered his place of residence. He was given two life sentences, as well as 20, 15, and 5 years for separate episodes. He was 31 at the time and his life outside of prison is now over.
Okay, but what about Tor? Isn't it anonymous?
Here's a teaser: in the fall of 2016 Swedish police in collaboration with colleagues from other countries conducted an international operation called "Titan". The result? 3000 drug buyers on the Tor network were caught. There you have it, the protected Tor with the darknet! The reality is that Tor only conceals a user's activity within its network. Once any communication "tail" extends beyond these boundaries it becomes a glaring piece of evidence that leads to the unraveling of the aforementioned criminal cases. In other words, darknet users are often caught based on their external activities. Activities that start in Tor and end in the real world. But darknet users also face other privacy threats...
1. Hacking accounts on darknet sites.
Hacking an account on a darknet site is easier than on platforms like eBay or Amazon. Hackers take advantage of this. They gain control of the account and operate on behalf of its previous owner for some time. The original owner may not even have time to warn anyone because messages sent from a "fake" account in the darknet look especially suspicious. Other communication channels in this sphere are not frequently used either. Moreover, after hacking an account the hacker gains access to the previous owner's old correspondence. So setting up passphrases or requesting proof from past communication doesn't help. Essentially, the user's identity is stolen, and a lot can be done in their name. The joke is that the real account owner cannot prove anything without de-anonymization. They won't show their personal photo, phone number or social media profiles.
2. Uploading viruses and malicious scripts.
Darknet sites can be infected with viruses. Why not? They are not fundamentally different from regular websites. For example, a malicious script can reveal a user's real IP address or intercept their traffic without hacking their account. The advantage of infecting sites is the scale of the attack. While accounts are usually breached one by one, here you can obtain all traffic or IP addresses of users who visited the site within a certain time frame. After that you can calmly uncover identities, initiate legal proceedings and apprehend lawbreakers as if nothing happened.
3. Cryptocurrency transactions are transparent.
It's time to dispel the myth of bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies offering complete anonymity. In the bitcoin blockchain every transaction can be traced back to the genesis block (the very first block in the chain). This means that if you know the bitcoin address of the seller you can see all the transactions made from it. Consequently, you can identify the other party in the transaction. Sometimes addresses can be easily Googled to establish a connection between them and real people outside the darknet. By the way, a U.S. Secret Service agent involved in the Silk Road investigation was identified after stealing 13,000 bitcoins (approximately $108 million at today's rate). He transferred the bitcoins from his wallet to an exchange to convert them into traditional currency. He was tracked down based on the exchange's data and credit card information. To enhance transaction anonymity bitcoin mixers can be used. They blend transactions from different addresses masking the sender and receiver and breaking down a large transaction into many small ones. But they don't provide 100% anonymity.