Two really interesting things to me are (1) that it's now possible to have hundreds of millions of dollars worth of assets and not have them seized when arrested; and (2) there's a lot of speculation that bitcoin was created by a government entity and that that's who Satoshi is - what are the implications of that entity funding DPR?
Can somebody explain to me how the FBI could seize his bitcoins without knowing his password? My passwords for such things are long, written nowhere, and I enter them on oddball platforms and applications (e.g. not Windows). Is that not enough?
It's suspected that computer forensics managed to recover the private key of an unencrypted wallet from his disk. The sequence of events would be: He previously used an unencrypted wallet. Then he encrypted it and deleted his old wallet.dat. Then he forgot to zero out his "deleted files" area of his filesystem, so the old wallet.dat was recoverable via forensics.
Does no one think that with that much money in his wallet, he wouldn't have simply memorized the private key in addition to storing it somewhere? The keys aren't really that long or hard to memorize and I would certainly remember mine if I had any significant amount of money tied to it.
Yeah, you would think that, but you'd also think he wouldn't have made a number of other pretty elementary mistakes that led to him getting caught, like promoting the website using a username linked to his email address (firstname.lastname@gmail.com), asking for help programming TOR services using his real name then quickly trying to delete his name, twice paying to have people assassinated that resulted in him getting conned (once to the FBI), and ordering fake IDs online to be sent to his residence under his name.
Yes. According to the paper they not only transferred the money, and they did it in 445 chunks of 324 bitcoins each (and one chunk with the remainder).
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Two really interesting things to me are (1) that it's now possible to have hundreds of millions of dollars worth of assets and not have them seized when arrested; and (2) there's a lot of speculation that bitcoin was created by a government entity and that that's who Satoshi is - what are the implications of that entity funding DPR?
Can somebody explain to me how the FBI could seize his bitcoins without knowing his password? My passwords for such things are long, written nowhere, and I enter them on oddball platforms and applications (e.g. not Windows). Is that not enough?
It's suspected that computer forensics managed to recover the private key of an unencrypted wallet from his disk. The sequence of events would be: He previously used an unencrypted wallet. Then he encrypted it and deleted his old wallet.dat. Then he forgot to zero out his "deleted files" area of his filesystem, so the old wallet.dat was recoverable via forensics.
So obvious, yet, easy to forget
This is a big gaping hole in using GPG for example
It either prints the content (if it's a text file this is ok), or you have to save it to be useful.
And then you erase it and think it's enough.
They probably have his wallet file, but it's encrypted and he hasn't given them the password.
So in theory it's "seized" ... if they can brute force / guess the password.
But in practice, with access to a computer, DPR could probably transfer the contents from the address to a new wallet.
Does no one think that with that much money in his wallet, he wouldn't have simply memorized the private key in addition to storing it somewhere? The keys aren't really that long or hard to memorize and I would certainly remember mine if I had any significant amount of money tied to it.
Yeah, you would think that, but you'd also think he wouldn't have made a number of other pretty elementary mistakes that led to him getting caught, like promoting the website using a username linked to his email address (firstname.lastname@gmail.com), asking for help programming TOR services using his real name then quickly trying to delete his name, twice paying to have people assassinated that resulted in him getting conned (once to the FBI), and ordering fake IDs online to be sent to his residence under his name.
This certainly could do for a Breaking bad Computer Science version.
Didn't the article specifically state that the FBI transferred coins from his wallet to their own?
Yes. According to the paper they not only transferred the money, and they did it in 445 chunks of 324 bitcoins each (and one chunk with the remainder).
324 spells FBI on a phone keypad.
Why would they sign the transaction that way?
To send a message / gloat.
Same reason perp walks happen.
SCNR: http://xkcd.com/538/
Possible he didn't have have a password on his wallet, just his laptop, which was unlocked when they arrested him.
I can't imagine DPR would be that stupid.
• He posted a question on StackOverflow with his real name and the silk road address.
• His first post on Bitcointalk was him introducing the silk road and then again about a job opportunity with his real email address.
• He ordered fake IDs on his own market to his house with his DPR identity and his real face.
You can't get any stupider.