Why we don’t need more surveillance: All major coups of law enforcement in the darknet where achieved by classical investigation methods. Well done, dear cops, and I mean that. OSI Layers 8 and above have enough loopholes to offer.
Reality update: Inside the shutdown of the ‘world’s largest’ child sex abuse website – TechCrunch … :
“According to the indictment, federal agents began investigating the site in September 2017, two months before the hackers breached the site. The site’s administrator, Jong Woo Son, had been running the operation from his residence in South Korea since 2015.
The indictment said the main landing page to the site contained a security flaw that let investigators discover some of the IP addresses of the dark web site — simply by right-clicking the page and viewing the source of the website. It was a major error, one that would trigger a chain of events that would ensnare the entire site and its users.
Prosecutors said in the indictment that they found several IP addresses: 121.185.153.64 and 121.185.153.45. One of the IP addresses the hackers gave me was 121.185.153.114 — an address on the same network subnet as the dark web site. It was long-awaited confirmation that the hackers were telling the truth. They did in fact breach the site. But whether or not the government knew about the breach remains a mystery.”
(…)
“The hacker group has not been in touch since we broke off communications. Publishing a story about the hack two years ago may have caused irreparable harm to the government’s investigation, potentially sinking it entirely. It was a frustrating time, not least being in the dark and not knowing if anyone was doing anything.
I’ve never been so glad to walk away from a story.”