from Hacker News

Mail from the (Velvet) Cybercrime Underground

by andreipop on 7/30/13, 5:08 AM with 31 comments

• by nemesisj on 7/30/13, 8:47 AM

  I really enjoyed this blog post for some reason - I think the frank dissection of how the whole plot was hatched was really interesting.

  The main takeaway for me is how worrying the chosen attack vector was, and what it says about the state of the USA. Think about it - the most effective way to remotely cripple someone you hate is to turn the USA's ridiculous drug enforcement apparatus on them. It's not a bomb or insults, or any kind of direct or overt physical harm, it's simply mailing them a narcotic and tipping off the police.

  What if this guy hadn't been monitoring things? He could very well have been in a nasty, highly stressful, possibly career ending situation simply due to America's stance on drug enforcement.

• by lifeisstillgood on 7/30/13, 6:23 AM

  For me the two big takeaways are the cop who wanted to unplug from Google. This is likely to be a fairly sizeable minority of the world who used to know how it all worked - and just cannot be bothered to learn the new rules.

  I am not sure if that's a good or a bad thing - if grandpa is not online can be do video calls to the grandkids ?

  The second is of course - I do not monitor these boards and of course the next attempt will not be public. Not sure how to react if a dozen baggies got delivered. Hand it over to the cops I guess.

  It is the makings of an interesting real life DDoS attack on politicians for example

• by marvin on 7/30/13, 5:59 AM

  Would the claim "I didn't order this, someone wanted to frame me" hold up in court if this guy hadn't discovered this scheme?

• by Renaud on 7/30/13, 6:29 AM

  You must be something right when you attract that much dedicated attention...

  I'm surprised at how personal these attacks are. Is it that common for public security figures to be at such risk ?

• by gedrap on 7/30/13, 8:16 AM

  And that's really worrying. For me, it makes various threats and other cyber bullying look like a game. 'I wish you get cancer' yeah whatever f-off kid.

  But this one can easily ruin someones life. Or at least give enough stress to shorten it for a while. Not even talking about legal expenses to prove it's not yours. I mean... Police finds reasonable amount of Class A drugs at your place. 'it's not my' 'yeah right, everyone says that'.

• by undoware on 7/30/13, 7:12 AM

  I always get a kick out of Krebs' relationship with the thesaurus.

  "Miscreants" "goons" "fraudsters"

  Seriously, 'goons'? What is this, an Archie comic?

  But, yes, fascinating article, nonetheless. I dislike the man for reasons difficult to articulate, but there is no arguing with a story like this. Great read.

• by X4 on 7/31/13, 2:06 AM

  How could Krebs protect himself, if someone ordered contract killers from the silkroad? I do hope that he get's some bodyguards, I never knew that infosec was a life-threatening job. I wish that it at least pays off for him, because it's surely a hard situation for his family. I couldn't take a breath, if I knew that my brother or sister was in danger.

  I think these criminals should be very thankful to have Kreb alive and not in jail, because a) they win more market, by getting rid of other criminals b) they learn howto he doxxed the other criminals and can protect themselves better.

  Maybe one of you has ideas on howto protect against that, then pleaes tell us

• by ollybee on 7/30/13, 7:43 AM

  While entertaining for us responding in such a public way will encourage further stunts from his adversaries. Kreb plays a dangerous game.

• by stfu on 7/30/13, 8:23 PM

  This seems like a good starting point to deny having made any "orders" from the silkroad yourself.

  It's all some internet conspiracy! The same thing happened to Krebs."

• by sidcool on 7/30/13, 9:15 AM

  It's interesting how righteous the Silk Road guy sounds. He's using his power to cheat, and then he quotes about agorism and shit.

• by soapit on 7/30/13, 3:17 PM

  What a waste of perfectly good heroin.

• by 01Michael10 on 7/30/13, 5:14 PM

  It seems wrong to provide the non-HTTPS link of a security blog...