'Tis The Season To Be REALLY Jolly: Cyber Monday Deals From Darknet Drug Dens

Buying drugs is often a gamble; buying drugs online seems like you're asking for trouble.  However, for those with a need to fix and a healthy appreciation for the underworld-like dealings of the dark net, today is a particularly special day.

As reported by the International Business Times, even purveyors of illicit substances enjoy spreading their wares to the masses on the cheap for "Cyber Monday."  Care for an ounce of marijuana for only $200?  How about 50% off on LSD?  Perhaps a rewarding dose of suboxone for all orders over $50?  These deals and many more exist on the dark net's dealing pages, similar to the recently-raided Silk Road.  Despite crackdowns on these types of websites, the spirit of the season shines through.

Definitely leave cookies under this tree for Santa.  He's going to be jonesing for them.
(Image courtesy ukcia.org.)

Drugs aren't the only thing you can find as stocking stuffers on the dark net.  Deals on mobile phones, hacked website accounts, and even stolen credit cards also abounded as vendors tried to maximize their Xmas-season attention.

Benjamin Ali, a senior spokesman for Centient (a company which specializes in monitoring the dark net) explained, "Despite law enforcement efforts to take these sites down, we are starting to see an influx of adverts towards Black Friday with two of the remaining major markets currently boasting over 20000 adverts...These two marketplaces have seen a growth in both the number of vendors and adverts on these sites, mainly due to not wanting to miss out on trade."

So maybe this year, Rudolph's nose will be even redder, due to some discount cocaine. Maybe "Silver Bells" are a new brand of Ecstasy. Maybe you intend to bring a whole new meaning to "lighting the Christmas tree."  However you choose to celebrate, happy holiday season.

Maybe the Three Wise Men want to take the other Silk Road this holiday.
(Image courtesy subjectify.com.)

Dead Drop: Darknet Service Will Be Your Whistleblower If You Mysteriously Disappear

It's hard out there for a whistleblower.  With Bradley "Chelsea" Manning in extreme custody, Edward Snowden hiding out in Russia, and numerous other knowledge-droppers dead under sketchy circumstances, one would be deterred before breathing a word of any new top-secret info - no matter how damning.  However, if you do happen to have your hands on some hot intel, and fear for your safety because of it, a new service will release your documents if you end up disappearing or dead.

The service, called Dead Man Zero, is accessible only through the deep web.  According to vice.com, it costs around $120 (paid in bitcoin.)  One uploads their files to a secure cloud, then the site requires password updates (set at a variable time preference by the user), which if not established will trigger a release of the documents to the user's desired outlets (lawyers, journalists, etc.)

“So what if something happens to you?” Dead Man Zero's site ponders. "Especially if you're trying to do something good like blow the whistle on something evil or wrong in society or government. There should be consequences if you are hurt, jailed, or even killed for trying to render a genuine and risky service to our free society...Now you have some protection. If 'something happens' to you, then your disclosures can be made public regardless.”

It adds, "If events overtake you, you can still overtake your adversaries."

Of course, for anyone paranoid enough to use this service, a secondary dose of worry ensues.  Is the cloud secure enough?  Will the site sustain long enough to make certain my documents really do survive me?  Will they follow through with their promise despite what the intel may contain?  Yes, it is a gamble.  But so is possessing information worthy of this kind of necessity.  For true protection of what is too dangerous for public knowledge, it's either a service like this, or a buried chest full of documents and some keys distributed to your close associates...which do you feel is truly the safest?

You could always test their security by uploading a treasure map to the cloud and laying booby traps for anyone who comes after it.  Just an option.

Frying The Onion Ring: NSA Databases ALL German Tor Users

While the NSA claims to only target a small number of internet users for its creepy peeping (and then, only for our "security"), recent discoveries have shown that their methods of determining who is watch-worthy is more than just a few naughty buzzwords you may have typed into Google. Data from targeted users is compiled and stored indefinitely...with some targets (particularly those overseas) having done nothing more than use the Tor anonymizing software.

Tor, an "onion" type encryption service, anonymizes one by rerouting information through various proxy servers. This is extremely difficult to trace and henceforth infuriating to the NSA. Rather than do actual investigations to decide who may actually be committing cybercrimes via this software, the NSA instead chooses to target anyone who has downloaded the program to their computer. They are apparently under the assumption that those of us who are smart enough to recognize what is going on and going wrong are likely criminals for taking the "crazy" steps to protect ourselves.

This revelation, as reported by boingboing.com, first emerged from the investigations of several intrepid German reporters. The leak of this information is thought to have been divulged post-Snowden, leading reporter Corey Doctorow to speculate, "The existence of a potential second source means that Snowden may have inspired some of his former colleagues to take a long, hard look at the agency's cavalier attitude to the law and decency."  Yet while the total Tor-based "terrorist" list is currently thought only to apply to German users, one would not be surprised if this did or will soon apply to Tor users in America.

If only one good apple could change the whole rotten barrel. At least we still have a barrel of...onions?  Stinking as the whole operation is, the powers that be can't simply stop our freedom of thought just yet.

OnionWare Anonymity Software Makes Spies Cry: New Secure Filesharing Service Expertly Thwarts Middlemen

With privacy issues becoming more and more critical in modern life, it is important to retain a feeling of security when dealing with one's major online documents. More than simple spied-on social media or intercepted emails, having a means to store and transfer large files online in a private manner is the focus of a new anonymity software.

Inspired by NSA patriot Edward Snowden, the new OnionWare technology uses the super-secure Tor network to thwart prying eyes, then establishes a temporary website on the user's computer. This eliminates the "middleman" of other filesharing services like Dropbox, which could be infiltrated by the government at any point. Using Onionware and Tor, a secure password and URL are exchanged peer-to-peer, and once the desired files are downloaded by the recipient, the temporary site is deleted permanently.

Parker Higgins, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, lauded the new technology, telling www.digitaljournal.com that, "Peer-to-peer offers no convenient mechanism for centralized surveillance or censorship. By design, there's usually no middleman that can easily record metadata about transfers—who uploaded and downloaded what, when, and from where—or block those transfers...recording all of it would require a dragnet effort, not a simple request for a log file from a centralized service provider."

The software was developed by tech analyst and cryptography/cybersecurity crusader Micah Lee while trying to expedite the secure transfer of files between Edward Snowden and journalists David Miranda and Glenn Greenwald, whose own files came under government scrutiny once the Snowden leaks were exposed.

Mother Jones Profiles a Few Meshnets

From Mother Jones:

JOSEPH BONICIOLI mostly uses the same internet you and I do. He pays a service provider a monthly fee to get him online. But to talk to his friends and neighbors in Athens, Greece, he's also got something much weirder and more interesting: a private, parallel internet.

He and his fellow Athenians built it. They did so by linking up a set of rooftop wifi antennas to create a "mesh," a sort of bucket brigade that can pass along data and signals. It's actually faster than the Net we pay for: Data travels through the mesh at no less than 14 megabits a second, and up to 150 Mbs a second, about 30 times faster than the commercial pipeline I get at home. Bonicioli and the others can send messages, video chat, and trade huge files without ever appearing on the regular internet. And it's a pretty big group of people: Their Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network has more than 1,000 members, from Athens proper to nearby islands. Anyone can join for free by installing some equipment. "It's like a whole other web," Bonicioli told me recently. "It's our network, but it's also a playground."

Indeed, the mesh has become a major social hub . . .