The Silk Road offers an online marketplace operated under the fake name of Dread Pirate Roberts to allow its users to use it safely and namelessly to buy various products including all types of art, apparel, books, biotic materials, computer equipment, digital goods and collectibles and many more. This website was launched in 2011 February. This website is also known as eBay or Amazon.com for illegal drugs.
History of Silk Road
The history of the Silk Road starts from February 2011 when it was launched. It was named after the name of historical trade route invented between a number of Afro-Eurasian countries during 206 BC — 220 AD, the period of Han Dynasty. This website became popular among internet users after the publication of the gawker’s article in June 2011. Charles Schumer, U.S. Senator, has alerted the DEA and Department of Justice, the federal law enforcement authorities to shut it down, due to the increasing traffic to this website.
An Australian MDMA and cocaine dealer was convicted in February 2013 for the crimes directly related to this website. Authorities searched his premises and detected drugs imported through mail along with images the Silk Road’s file on his PC. But the DEA and Australian police got limited success in arresting the website users. Continuous attacks from DDoS have closed this site for a short period in May 2013. In June 2013 United States Drug Enforcement Administration apprehended 11.02 bitcoins worth $814 under a sting operation from Silk Road. A man from New Zealand was sentenced in December 2013 to be jailed for two years and four months for buying 15 grams of methamphetamine from Silk Road.
Ross William Ulbricht was arrested by the FBI on 2nd October 2013 in San Francisco for operating the Silk Road under a false name of Dread Pirate Roberts on the doubt of soliciting murder, drug trafficking, money laundering and computer hacking. 26,000 Bitcoins worth approximately $3.6 million were also seized from Silk Road’s account at that time. But Ulbricht denied all the charges on 4th October 2013 in the federal court of San Francisco.
Evolution of Silk Road 2.0
A dubbed the website ‘Silk Road 2.0’ was re-launched on 6th November 2013 as an improved version of earlier Silk Road, which was operated under the fake name of Dread Pirate Roberts, with improved security measures. Its administrator distributed the encrypted copies of the source code of this particular site very carefully to its customers. Gary Davis and Andrew Michael Jones were reported to be arrested on 20th December 2013 as the administrators of this site.
But Libertas and Inigo continued to operate Silk Road 2.0 after Dread Pirate Roberts abruptly gave up the control of the site. The control of the site, which is famous for many reasons. At this time Defcon took over this new site as a temporary administrator. But the weakening, the worth of bitcoins in the site’s escrow account had compelled Defcon to announce transaction malleability on 13th February 2014. In April 2014 it was reported that Refresh Deposits’ function was the reason behind the transaction vulnerability. By April 8, 2014, 50% of the hack victims were repaid from the commissions of the administrators of the Silk Road. Click here to learn more.
