1 of 2 
Paying for your crimes with Bitcoin
Posted on 27 Jan 2012 at 10:04
Davey Winder examines the online equivalent of cash-in-hand payments
It’s the drug-dealing trade Silk Road is best known for, though, with vendors ranked using a reputation rating system not dissimilar to the one used by eBay, and there are relatively very few reports of scamming on the forums where such things are discussed, suggesting honour among online thieves.
As I write this column, Silk Road has been operational for around nine months – in full view of law-enforcement authorities in both the UK and US (the two countries that are home to the majority of traders to be found there) yet it remains fully operational.
The shifters of stolen credit card data aren’t usually this observant of posting rules
One can only assume that it’s a matter of time before the inevitable happens and the authorities cotton on to Silk Road and the nefarious trading that takes place there, but when that finally happens it will have absolutely no impact on the underground market in stolen credit cards.
Black market credit card boom
During my many visits to the site during this investigation, I never found so much as one stolen credit card for sale. That might be due to a perverse sense of anarchist ethics, the aforementioned honour among thieves, because the sellers’ guide asks potential traders not to list “anything whose purpose is to harm or defraud, such as stolen credit cards, counterfeit currency, personal info, assassinations and weapons of mass destruction…”.
Marijuana and machine guns are okay, though. The shifters of stolen credit card data aren’t usually this observant of posting rules, so perhaps Silk Road’s admin team actively removes those posts that are considered below the belt – who knows? What I do know is that you can find stolen credit cards being offered for sale in the most unlikely of places, and perhaps the most unlikely of all, yet one of the most commonly used by the bad guys, is Pastebin.
This online temporary repository of source code for programmers has been running for more than ten years, with ten million “pastes” in total, and sadly, among them are more than a handful of not-so-cleverly-disguised adverts for folk trading in stolen credit card data.
Stolen source code, password lists and confidential data are among the banned types of text that may not be posted to Pastebin
There is an acceptable-use policy in force, and stolen source code, password lists and confidential data are among the banned types of text that may not be posted to Pastebin. A “report abuse” system attempts to filter out what it can, and such postings are deleted whenever they’re found, and the IP addresses of repeat offenders blocked.
Yet still the problem remains, because many cybercriminals lack access to the special members-only underground stolen data sites (more of which below), or are seeking to proffer their illicit wares to a wider audience, and so Pastebin is very much on their radar.
This could be for as simple a reason as that it’s one of the easiest places to deposit very large text files, such as a stolen password list or an advert for credit card data, without any proactive moderation or user registration to prevent publication.
All Pastebin’s moderation is reactive, after the offence, and by the time the offending advert is spotted it will already have attracted enough trade to make it worthwhile.
While Pastebin remains undoubtedly popular with political hacktivists, and with opportunist or amateur credit card thieves, the professional end of the market is far less open about the places it trades its wares.
Download a year of Davey Winder's Online Security columns by heading to our Free Downloads site
From around the web
A factual article, but lacking in true context.
This article was decent, in that it contained honest, factual information about Bitcoin and the Bitcoin network. However, I think its journalistic value and integrity is questionable when continuous links between Bitcoin, and the illicit anonymous marketplace, Silk Road, continue to exist and draw media attention.
To the layperson, it might seem as though Bitcoin and Silk Road are parts of one system and issue. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The truth is that Silk Road is an anonymous entity operating on the distributed tor network whose purpose is to facilitate unregulated, anonymous transactions between buyers and sellers worldwide. Characterized by brazen, open sales of illicit products and services (as defined by traditional regulatory values), The Silk Road is a topic and issue all its own.
That such an anonymous service would choose to use Bitcoin as its sole method of paying for transactions can hardly be considered a surprise.
Like the tor network that protects the anonymity of all parties involved in the use of the Silk Road marketplace, Bitcoin is yet another open-source, decentralized, P2P network facilitating unregulated asset transfer, holdings, and conversion. I.E. it's merely a payment tool that has attributes that happen to coincide with the requirements of markets and transactions of a questionable nature.
As the increasingly worthless fiat currencies are the tools of an "old-school" economy that is literally on the brink of collapse, radical technology and decentralized universal currency and commodities are providing the foundation of a new economy that is beyond the corruption and economically destructive policies that have been systematically implemented the around the world.
I'd like to see more articles, blogs, and op-ed pieces that look at emerging digital currency solutions in light of how they can be of benefit now, and potential uses and ideas for their future.
In the hands of a carpenter, a hammer is an efficient and safe tool for driving nails. In the hands of someone less scrupulous, that hammer can be a murder weapon. Similarly, Bitcoins are a tool with the tremendous potential of redefining how the world economy operates. Let's not brand it a "murder weapon" just because it could conceivably used for questionable purposes.
By swalter718 on 27 Jan 2012 
What am I missing?
If there's a finite (21 million) Bitcoins in circulation and you can only mine them using CPU resources, then how can you received them, if they're all in circulation? Does somebody else lose their's?
By Steve_Adey on 27 Jan 2012
What am I missing?
If there's a finite (21 million) Bitcoins in circulation and you can only mine them using CPU resources, then how can you received them, if they're all in circulation? Does somebody else lose their's?
By Steve_Adey on 27 Jan 2012
@Steve_Adey
The computers work out complex mathematical problems, the complexity increases, so at the beginning BitCoins were generated quickly, but the process is slowing down, now that so muc coinage is in circulation.
More Bitcoins will be generated, as and when the next iterration of the problem is solved, but this is a hard work problem, so they can't just "print" new currency, it can only come onto the market once it has been mined - like real gold, you go panning for gold, you can't just whack out a few thousand new nuggets on a printing press.
By big_D on 27 Jan 2012
"so they can't just "print" new currency"
No wonder central bankers don't like it.
By Lacrobat on 27 Jan 2012
Mr. Winder seems to assume that because many Silk Road products are illegal, the existence of the site is "a bad thing:"
...honour among online thieves...
...Silk Road and the nefarious trading that takes place there...
Neither Silk Road buyers nor sellers are thieves. Silk Road simply provides a marketplace for mutual, voluntary trade. Scammers are flagged and honest people refuse to deal with them.
No one should be able to prevent me from trading or using drugs, as long as I'm not coercing, robbing or otherwise committing aggression against someone. In fact, it's the government that commits acts of aggresion, by locking us up because we smoke a joint, shooting the family dog during drug raids, and giving guns to violent drug gangs.
Silk Road is agorism in action, folks!
By Plato on 28 Jan 2012
Platoism
I can't decide whether Plato is genuine in the points being posted, or taking the mick.
If genuine, are they really saying that locking people up for "...giving guns to violent drugs gangs" is a bad thing?
If genuine, whilst I can accept your right to hold such views, at best I find them dangerously naive. And at worst self-deceiving.
Also, discussing anti-drugs policies is a bit outside the remit of an IT magazine site. Whereas the use of IT for currently illegal activities isn't.
By Penfolduk01 on 29 Jan 2012
I see
Thanks big_D for the explanation. Does that mean when quantum computers come a long, there will be another flurry of a few million coins then?
By Steve_Adey on 30 Jan 2012
@Steve_Adey
Very possibly, plus computers in general are getting faster each year.
Some people are using nVidia CUDA and Tesla arrays, for example, running 24/7, trying to earn coin.
By big_D on 1 Feb 2012
Diminishing returns
I'm guessing these people have enough money to blow away on high-end graphics cards and CPUs. That must outweigh the value of the coins.
By Steve_Adey on 1 Feb 2012
BBC pinched your story without giving you credits
Hi Dave,
See "investigative journalism" from BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16801382
By eezvmt on 3 Feb 2012
@eezvmt
I heard that at the weekend on No Agenda.
Talk about scare mongering! The BBC should talk to Dave about how to do proper investigative reporting and journalism!
By big_D on 8 Feb 2012
Davey Winder
Davey is a contributing editor to PC Pro, having covered the internet as a topic since the magazine started in 1994. Since that time he's won numerous awards for his journalism, but remains a small-business consultant specialising in privacy, security and usability issues.
advertisement
- Why you have to be left in the dark on OS patches
- Is Microsoft mismanaging Windows on ARM?
- Dealing with spam surrogates
- Why 3G broadband can be better and cheaper than ADSL
- Is Twitter bad for business?
- Publishing your email address isn't a security disaster
- Why you'll need a fax machine to develop iOS apps
- Learning to adapt to the mobile web
- Why you shouldn't use WPS on your Wi-Fi network
- Disabled users suffer when software breaks the rules
- Laptop bag reviews: nine tested
- Sony VAIO T Series Ultrabook review: first look
- Revealed: the military standards and robots HP uses to test its laptops
- Windows 8: multi-monitors and double standards?
- Why is TalkTalk's year-old porn filter suddenly big news?
- Why are laptop screens so far behind mobiles?
- HP EliteBook Folio review: first look
- The shoebox-sized all-in-one printer
- Forget the Ultrabook: here comes the HP Sleekbook
- HP Spectre XT review: first look
- Autonomy's Lynch joins 27,000 on way out of HP
- ICO: no fines for breaking cookie rules
- HP set to slash up to 30,000 jobs
- Government sites to miss cookie deadline
- Microsoft tweaks multi-monitor support in Windows 8
- Apple patches Leopard, despite ending support last year
- Defra opens rural broadband funding applications
- BT's broadband sales surpass calls revenue
- Apple patches multiple security issues
- FBI warns travellers to beware attacks via hotel Wi-Fi
advertisement
