Dark web trap

The Dark Web is an odd place.

First, to be clear, there's a huge amount of invisible stuff on the web. Absolutely gigantic. When you connect to a news site for a news story, it generally comes from a database--and there's lots of stuff in that database. We have thousands of pictures at IceCube, but no way for you to browse them. If you know what you're looking for, you can view it, but we have no index and the rest is not obvious--google doesn't see it, for example.

That's not what I'm talking about here. You can find details on how to access the Dark Web in a number of different places, some of them even reputable. Some reporters have ventured there and reported back what they found.

Bottom line: you need special software, and you need to know where to look. And if you've got any sense at all, you use several virtual networks to conceal where you are, and work from a throw-away virtual machine, or maybe a virtual machine inside a VM. Some people are very good at sniffing out where you are, and some of them are not nice people. Transactions run through crypto-currency. There appear to be, believe it or not, circles of trust. Vendors who cheat can be flagged. I assume lots of work has gone into figuring out how to subvert these trust networks.

What can you do there? Communicate privately with like minded people. That might be North Korean dissidents, or it might be neo-Nazis, or kiddie porn creators, or communists with an action plan.

Or you can also buy and sell stuff that you don't want other people to know about: fentanyl mailed from China, hand grenades, radioactive poisons, what have you. Even, supposedly, hits.

That's where one weak point in the chain shows up: if you want delivery of something physical, you have to give a physical location.

One of our local "frequent protestors" just got himself arrested for trying to buy radioactive substances to kill someone. Turns out the vendor was the FBI.

Ryan allegedly asked in subsequent contacts about how long would it take the poison to kill someone after ingested.

“I’m looking for something that’s very rare/difficult to get a hold of. Also that doesn’t show symptoms immediately but kills them fairly soon after,” the message said.

He also said he wanted the material to be “extremely difficult” to get so people would automatically suspect the government, and that the material would be safe to ship.

Anybody can pretend to be anybody on the Dark Web, but when you go to pick up the delivery it is pretty hard to deny that you-done-it.

Don't try this at home. Or anywhere, actually, unless you actually happen to be North Korean dissidents trying to stay alive. Even then I'd wonder.

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UPDATE:

His lawyer claims he had cancer already, and wanted to kill himself in a way that a) would be untraceable and look like cancer and b) would make people think the government did it. The claims are not entirely consistent--throwing stuff on the wall to see what sticks?