[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> it seems plausible that law enforcement have a vulnerability to locate servers over the Tor network.

They've bugged nearly all of the entrance and exit nodes. This allows them to do trivial traffic analysis. Parallel construction hides the method from the courts which would be reluctant to rule against anyway.

[typedweb]

Or they were just in on it from day 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8568765

The failures of modern crypto (and historical) are almost always usage bugs, not the technology itself.

[emcrazyone]

This may be true but it doesn't seem necessary if you believe this:

During the Government’s investigation, which was conducted jointly by the FBI and HSI, an HSI agent acting in an undercover capacity (the “HSI-UC”) successfully infiltrated the support staff involved in the administration of the Silk Road 2.0 website, and was given access to private, restricted areas of the site reserved for BENTHALL and his administrative staff. By doing so, the HSI-UC was able to interact directly with BENTHALL throughout his operation of the website.

[higherpurpose]

Let's see if they take down any more markets, and if all of them have "undercover agents". If not, then it should be clear that wasn't the main method of catching them, but just one to flaunt in front of the press for doing things "old school", and not NSA-style (or with NSA's help).