WAS IST TORCHAT SOFTWARE

To get people interested in the the new site in January 2011, Ulbricht posted a message on the forum, under the username Altoid, asking if anyone had tried the site. Facebook and other public websites: Ulbricht sowed the seeds of his demise the very first time he publicized the Silk Road. Law enforcement had only to verify that the messages, many of them incriminating, came from Dread Pirate Roberts, by using the public key found on the laptop.Ĥ. On Ulbricht's computer, in a folder marked 'keys,' were the private keys used to sign Dread Pirate Roberts' messages. A public key allows someone to verify that a message comes from the person who claims to have sent it. Ulbricht had affixed Dread Pirate Roberts' public encryption key to an untold number of Silk Road-related emails and forum posts. In the end, encryption did as much to betray Dread Pirate Roberts' identity as to protect it. Ulbricht didn't do himself any favors by working that day with his back turned to the rest of the room - something he had warned other Silk Road administrators not to do.īecause law enforcement agents snatched the laptop before Ulbricht had closed it, the contents of its hard drive were completely accessible to them, including the chat logs, a personal journal, Silk Road spreadsheets, and most importantly, Dread Pirate Roberts' private encryption keys. They arrested him before he could close the laptop lid, which would have logged him out and locked the contents. Agents staked out his San Francisco neighborhood until he showed up at the local library, set up his laptop and logged on. Ulbricht occasionally took his laptop out in public to work. That's why law enforcement agents had to catch Ulbricht while he was logged into the Silk Road's admin console. But eventually the person with the keys has to unlock the information in order to see it. Encryption: Encryption puts a digital padlock on information so it can't be viewed. Perhaps he thought law enforcement agents would never see the chats because they were on an encrypted hard drive.ģ. Why Ulbricht chose this option is a mystery. In TorChat, the user has to turn on the logging function for the chats to be saved in log files. In example after example, the prosecution pointed to logs where the laptop user identified himself as Dread Pirate Roberts. It provides an encrypted communication channel between two parties, using a Tor network to obscure the connection between them.Īlthough TorChat promises encrypted messaging, Ulbricht chose to save the logs in plain text on his computer, creating a trove of conversations with fellow Silk Road administrators.

WAS IST TORCHAT SOFTWARE

Internal communication was carried out mostly through free software called TorChat. Thousands of pages of chat logs helped prosecutors trace the growth of Silk Road. Ulbricht either didn't use the tumbler, or if he did, it didn't help.Ģ. Silk Road offered a service, called a tumbler, that passed bitcoins through several intermediate wallets to obscure their origin and destination. In Silk Road's case, prosecutors found it relatively trivial to track profits from Silk Road as they were transferred from wallets used by the online market to wallets on Ulbricht's laptop.

This case showed that all law enforcement needs to do is locate the wallets on each side of a transaction and follow the money. But unlike cash, a detailed public ledger called the blockchain keeps track of each wallet a bitcoin passes through. Like cash, bitcoins aren't tied to a person's identity. Bitcoin: If you assume your bitcoins can't be traced back to you, think again. How was Ulbricht nabbed? At least some of the blame can be placed on what seems like misplaced trust in a handful of technologies Ulbricht thought would shield his identity.

Was ist torchat