Five technologies that betrayed Silk Road's anonymity
Pro tip for any would-be online drug kingpins: Don’t post vacation pictures on Facebook.
Ross Ulbricht was convicted in a Manhattan federal court last week for his role operating the Silk Road online marketplace. He could serve 30 years or more behind bars.
The market Ulbricht built was based on an expectation of anonymity: Silk Road servers operated within an anonymous Tor network. Transactions between buyers and sellers were conducted in bitcoin. Everything was supposedly untraceable. Yet prosecutors presented a wealth of digital evidence to convince the jury that Ulbricht was Dread Pirate Roberts, the handle used by the chief operator of the site.