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A dark web tycoon pleads guilty. But how was he caught?
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of MIT Technology Review
Posted: March 9th, 2020
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615163/a-dark-web-tycoon-...
Cybercriminal Eric Eoin Marques pleaded guilty in an American court this week. Marques faces up to 30 years in jail for running Freedom Hosting, which temporarily existed beyond reach of the law and ended up being used to host drug markets, money-laundering operations, hacking groups, and millions of images of child abuse. Investigators were somehow able to break the layers of anonymity that Marques had constructed, leading them to locate a crucial server in France. This discovery eventually led them to Marques himself. Marques was the first in a line of famous cybercriminals to be caught despite believing that using the privacy-shielding anonymity network Tor would make them safe behind their keyboards. The case demonstrates that government agencies can trace suspects through networks that were designed to be impenetrable. Marques has blamed the American NSAs world-class hackers, but the FBI has also been building up its efforts since 2002. And, some observers say, they often withhold key details of their investigations from defendants and judges alikesecrecy that could have wide-ranging cybersecurity implications across the internet. The FBI had found a way to break Tors anonymity protections, but the technical details of how it happened remain a mystery. Perhaps the greatest overarching question related to the investigation of this case is how the government was able to pierce Tors veil of anonymity, Marquess defense lawyers wrote in a recent filing.
Note: For more on this important case, see this informative article. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
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