The Silk Road was the first modern dark web marketplace, an online place for anonymously buying and selling illegal products and services using Bitcoin.
Ross Ulbricht created The Silk Road in 2011 and operated it until 2013 when the FBI shut it down. Its creator was eventually arrested and sentenced to life in prison.
But in a plot twist right out of a spy novel, a cyber attacker stole thousands of bitcoins from Silk Road and hid them away. It took law enforcement years to find the perpetrator. By then, the Bitcoins were worth more than $3.3 billion.
The extended law enforcement operation was difficult and complex. But ultimately, this saga set the stage for future action against darknet marketplaces.
Here’s what happened.
How Silk Road Worked
Two technologies assured anonymity for both sellers and buyers on Silk Road: The Tor network and Bitcoin. The Tor network is a browser and service that routes internet traffic through a series of servers. Each of these servers then hides the IP address so that it becomes untraceable.
Bitcoin is a digital currency created in 2009. It allows for peer-to-peer transactions without the need for a central authority, such as a bank or government. Instead, the blockchain records, secures and authenticates these transactions.
People bought and sold a wide range of products and services on the Silk Road. By 2013, however, some 70% of the purchases were drugs.
Tracing drugs shipped by mail to temporary P.O. boxes became The Silk Road’s undoing. This allowed law enforcement to arrest Ulbricht’s freelance employees and piece together the Silk Road story.
Still, the Tor network prevented law enforcement from nailing down exactly who was behind Silk Road. That was th ..
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