Hum Posted May 2, 2013 Share Posted May 2, 2013 An "underground" website famed for selling drugs and other illegal items has been targeted in a cyberattack. It appears the site suffered from a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack over the course of Tuesday and Wednesday. Silk Road is only accessible through Tor, a service which allows users to browse anonymously online. Several US politicians have called for the marketplace to be shut down, without success. DDoS attacks involve flooding a website with more traffic than it can handle, therefore knocking it offline. After two days of intermittent service, Silk Road's administrators told users on Wednesday morning the site was back in action - but said they could not rule out further downtime. "Silk Road is open and accessible," said the site's administrator, writing under the user name Dread Pirate Roberts. "As soon as the attacker finds out, he will likely change his tactics and try to take the site down again. "Hopefully he won't be able to, but time will tell." Prior to the site's recovery, owners speculated that the attack had exposed deep-rooted vulnerabilities in the Tor network. "It's looking more and more like a restructuring of the Tor software or even the Tor network will be required to mitigate the kind of attack we are under," one update read. Tor is a channel for people wanting to route their online communications anonymously. It has been used by activists to avoid censorship as well as those seeking anonymity for more nefarious reasons - leading it to be known as the "dark web". Silk Road takes its name from the historic trade routes spanning across Europe, Asia and parts of Africa. The website has gained a reputation as being an online black market, with illegal goods being sold openly. more matt4444 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fusi0n Posted May 2, 2013 Share Posted May 2, 2013 Great News for some, horrible news for others lol.. Buying drugs on the internet doesn't sound that good to me.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
123456789A Posted May 2, 2013 Share Posted May 2, 2013 How do you actually get your drugs delivered? UPS ground shipping? Hum 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hum Posted May 2, 2013 Author Share Posted May 2, 2013 Midnight Express :p Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raa Posted May 2, 2013 Share Posted May 2, 2013 How do you actually get your drugs delivered? UPS ground shipping? Brown and white envelopes, duh! :p Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Growled Member Posted May 2, 2013 Member Share Posted May 2, 2013 I wonder if that attack was some government's doing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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