The FBI have released details on how they found the Silk Road servers.
The Silk Road which was an illegal marketplace was obscured behind the service Tor however the FBI have now revealed how they discovered its location.
According to former FBI agent, Chris Tarbell, the login page for the SilkRoad used a CAPTCHA which was able to pull content from the open internet which is how they were able to trace the IP address and then the physical location.
When the FBI located the IP addresses they entered it into an ordinary browser, revealing the illegal websites CAPTCHA.
“Based on my experience this indicated that the Subject IP Address was the IP address of the SR Server, and that it was leaking from the SR server because the computer code underlying the login interface was not properly configured at the time to work on Tor,” stated Tarbell.
Tor is meant to disguise your identity by bouncing traffic across different Tor servers but this glitch in the system allowed the FBI to trace back straight to the IP address’ location.
This led to the arrest of owner, Ross Ulbricht for narcotics trafficking, computer hacking and money laundering.
Since this information has been released many are concerned that the FBI broke the law in order to trace the IP address.