[ichydkrsrnae]

Ulbricht was caught because an FBI agent, who would read things slowly and twice, recognized these 4 letters : heyy.

That's how Ulbricht sometimes spelled hey, and the agent had seen that particular spelling before in his investigation, in an email from Ulbrict’s student email address.

Nick Bilton's book “American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road” is a great read, highly recommended.

[nyolfen]

it strikes me as extremely naive to take this at face value. see https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R2013...

much more likely -- sigint tooling was applied to identify ulbricht, bulk metadata was turned over for his comms history, and it was pored over for things they could connect with sr to get warrants. imo, at least.

but getting to claim you're such a sharp investigator that you can figure it out by noticing the word heyy makes for a much better story to tell an author.

[ichydkrsrnae]

It was more complicated than just heyy, but I won't spoil the book.

It's been awhile since I've read it, but my impression was that solving the case was mostly traditional casework, and a lot of it, by many different people/agents/agencies.

That Reuters article certainly gives pause. Thanks for the link.

[unobatbayar]

That's what they want you to think. He was caught because; Nothing can match against the surveillance arsenal of the NSA.

[ichydkrsrnae]

That's not what I think, that's what Nick Bilton thinks. The quality of his book makes me partial to his thesis, of course, but NSA conspiracy blah adds nothing.

Also, lots more went into catching him than just heyy, but that was the lucky break that had him caught. Now he shares a prison with Dr. Unabomber Kazinsky.

[twobitshifter]

That could be the story but since parallel construction is routinely used to hide the existence of surveillance tools and back doors it’s not unreasonable to doubt it.

I thought I had heard it was stackoverflow, is that looped in somehow?

[ichydkrsrnae]

I don't recall StackOverflow being mentioned, no, but it's been a few years since I've read it.

[twobitshifter]

https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/silk-road-s-dread-pirat...

[ichydkrsrnae]

Correction: He was transferred to a penitentiary in Tucson, Arizona.

[ichydkrsrnae]

Have to admit. I was impressed with the USGOVs ability to recover bitcoin ransoms paid for cyberattacks. I'm not sure if impressed is the right word.

[rzz3]

Wtf, who doesn’t add extra y’s to hey sometimes? That wasn’t evidence.

[ichydkrsrnae]

I don't want to spoil the book; but, yes, that detail got him caught.

[acoard]

It’s not fiction you’re spoiling, but a factual conversation about events that you’re not going into due to spoilers. It is an odd defence that kills the conversation when other people bring up good points.

The parallel construction argument seems way more plausible if there’s nothing else besides “heyy”. If there is more, please say what it is instead of mentioning it exists but refusing to say it.