Markets: Silk Road (v2)
Silk Road 2.0 was launched on November 6, 2013, shortly after the seizure of the original Silk Road marketplace. It was originally created and operated by a new Dread Pirate Roberts, who was later identified as Thomas white, and a few other staff members from the Silk Road. There has been confusion as to who actually created the market, as its’ primary administrative role was later voluntarily transferred from its’ creator to a user named “Defcon”, later identified as Blake Benthall, shortly after three of the markets’ administrators were identified by law enforcement and subsequently arrested, two of whom were previously administrators of the original Silk Road, Gary Davis and Andrew Michael Jones, under the monikers “Libertas” and “Inigo”.
The marketplace was very similar to its predecessor as its’ layout design, user-interface, payment system, and rules were almost completely identical, though it provided enhanced security, and most of its’ staff members did not work for or have any known affiliation with its’ predecessor.
On February 13 of 2014, an announcement was made by Defcon which stated that all of the sites’ escrow accounts were compromised through a Bitcoin protocol vulnerability known as “transaction malleability”. Despite the market remaining online, all Bitcoin in its’ escrow accounts, valued at approximately 2.7 million dollars during the time, were claimed to have been stolen. The vulnerability was reported to have been in the markets’ “Refresh Deposits” function. The market staff vowed to use their earned commission generated by market sales to repay users who lost money during the attack, and it was later reported that %50 of users affected had been repaid by April 8.
Silk Road 2.0 was officially seized on November 6, 2014, along with other dark-net marketplaces as part of an international law enforcement effort called “Operation Onymous”. According to the FBI, they themselves identified a foreign server in May, commissioned someone to perform a forensic analysis of it, and confirmed that it was indeed the Silk Road 2.0 server. They didn’t specify how they identified the server, however, an undercover law enforcement agent joined a forum that was dedicated to resurrecting Silk Road after its’ seizure, and was selected for a role in market staff before the succeeding marketplace was even launched, which made Silk Road 2.0 partially compromised during the entirety of its’ existence. It has been speculated that the undercover agent working as market staff may have obtained information about the server from its’ administrators, or by connecting to it and exploiting it. After the FBI successfully located the markets’ server, they found that it frequently sent customer service emails to an individual Gmail address, which they later issued a subpoena to Google for its’ associated account, leading them to discover that it was registered to “Blake Benthall”, who identified himself as such in multiple emails sent from that account. The FBI also obtained that users’ IP address from Google, which they matched with one found to have connection and administrative access to the Silk Road 2.0 server. The agency noticed, that the server was briefly accessed from an IP address in Las Vegas for a couple of days in April that belonged to a hotel and, after later searching guest records, found that Benthall had stayed at that particular hotel during those days. The same incident occurred once again later in June at Lake Tahoe.
The FBI found that Blake Benthall had exchanged at least $273,626.60 worth of Bitcoin into US dollars. After searching his emails, they came to the conclusion that he had bought at least $25,000 worth of goods using Bitcoin, and that he had put a $70,000 down payment on a Tesla model S that cost $127,000.
During September, FBI agents decided to follow Benthall during a trip to visit his family in Houston, Texas, where they monitored activity outside of his family’s house while working with the undercover agent, in which they noted Defcon was active when Benthall was inside the house and silent when he was gone. The FBI was able to obtain a Pen Register from a court, which allows them to monitor a homes’ internet usage, and found that Benthall was using Tor when Defcon was active, which was the final piece of evidence needed to fully confirm his link to the Silk Road.
It wasn’t until November 6 when law enforcement decided to arrest Benthall and seize the Silk Road marketplace. It was reported that, due to his extensive cooperation with law enforcement, he was released not even two months later, and had all charges against him, excluding those pertaining to the failure to report income and pay taxes, were dropped.
Contrary to common belief that he was never found and has been living out his life as a free, rich man, Thomas White, more commonly known as Dread Pirate Roberts, was actually arrested around the same time as Benthall, though his arrest didn’t become public until 2019 when his trial started, in which he was sentenced to five years and four months in prison on charges related to money laundering, drug trafficking, and making indecent images of children.
