Some interesting titbits to come out of the latest Silk Road “rogue agent” allegations
I was digging through my Silk Road archives when researching parts of my new book, and came up with a couple of little nuggets surrounding the latest “rogue agent” allegations that I don’t think have been reported yet. TL;DR: What we assumed to be a simple Silk Road scam in early 2013 may have been […]
What OzFreelancer* did next
A couple of people have asked me about the book I mentioned in my last post. I recently threw in my nice, steady, well-paying but ultimately creatively unfulfilling tech-writing job. So here’s all the things I have in the pipeline that I’m finally getting around to. Another non-fiction book First, I’m working on a proposal for my agent for […]
So what’s been happening on the Dark Web?
The problem with writing a new book is that you save all the good stuff for the book and that leaves you with nothing for the blog. So in desperation, I’ve been clicking on random links from Onion crawlers to see if there’s anything new, relevant and/or even vaguely interesting happening in the deep dark web. […]
A word from one of the Silk Road “Old Guard”
There’s nothing like an inaccurate, poorly-written, unresearched defamatory piece of garbage journalism to bring people out of the woodwork. So I have to thank one Ms Margi Murphy for this laughably bad piece of trash I often lament the loss of Silk Road (v.1.0). I was so entrenched in that place, spending hours a day in the […]
The Little Texas Hit that Wasn’t
The hack of dark web “murder-for-hire” outfit Besa Mafia, which I wrote about a couple of days ago. has provided a treasure trove of stories of people who are prepared to go to extreme measures to be rid of someone in their lives. Most never got further than the initial enquiries. A few parted […]
Hitting on the Aussies – the Besa Mafia files
Before the recent hack confirmed definitively what rational people already knew – i.e. that the dark web “murder-for-hire” site was a scam – it was a little disconcerting that Besa Mafia’s No.1 FAQ was Do you have people in Australia? Now a thorough search of the leaked mails and orders has found no evidence that […]
The curious case of Besa Mafia
Disturbing revelations have come out of a dark web hire-a-hitman site Drugs, hacking services, stolen financial and personal information and fraud-related services are the staple products of the darknet markets. But there has always been websites offering far more sinister wares – poisons, human beings and hitmen. Such sites are overwhelmingly amateurish, poorly worded fakes, designed […]
Putting the party into Crypto
Once it was thought only crazy people wearing tinfoil hats believed their movements were being tracked all the time. Now it is only crazy people who don’t. According to the media, “a new kind of party craze has many Australians scrambling for invitations“. Crypto parties aren’t actually that new, but they are certainly getting more popular. I […]
What is it with Aussies and the darknet markets?
Ross Ulbricht, who was convicted earlier this year of being Dread Pirate Roberts, owner of online drugs bazaar Silk Road, is due to be sentenced next Friday. Australians were over-represented as customers of Silk Road (third largest user base by identified country according to FBI documents) and now it seems we will be over-represented at Ross Ulbricht’s […]
Ross Ulbricht’s family would like to see you….
… at his sentencing next week Ross Ulbricht, convicted of being the Dread Pirate Roberts, owner and operator of the original Silk Road, is due to be sentenced next Friday. And his family would be happy to see you there. “It would be good to have some support. I think it’s going to be very […]