Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: Logiquake on December 13, 2012, 09:22 pm
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I've been mining some bitcoins on and off for a while from various pools. I've never bought anything on Silk Road with those coins except for one time I did buy some drugs IRL with those Bitcoins. I transferred them to an IRL friend's Silk Road account so he could buy some heroin and he gave me some tabs in exchange. I wasn't too worried about that since I never received any drugs from SR to my address.
Anyway, back to my point. I was thinking about ordering from SR myself but first I wanted to cleanse my coins since the pools I was mining from could have my IP address logged and therefore it could get traced back to me so I put them in Bitcoin Fog (http://fogcore5n3ov3tui.onion/) and deleted my old wallet and created a new one. I let the coins sit in the Fog for about 3 weeks or so just to make sure they got thoroughly mixed and then withdrew them to my new wallet.
However, when browsing blockchain.info, I notice that they record an IP address.
Example (not at all related to me, I just pulled a random transaction off the front page):
http://blockchain.info/tx/7c3a34b6f861db1476ba04825a049c5012997fc3f8daf003bcf429c5139f9a46/7c3a34b6f861db1476ba04825a049c5012997fc3f8daf003bcf429c5139f9a46
So if I send my newly cleaned bitcoins to SR, will my IP address get recorded as the sender? I'm using the official bitcoin-qt client because I'd rather not trust some random third-party website with my money. I'd like to keep it safe and secure on my hard drive and my backup hard drive (both encrypted with TrueCrypt) so no one can run off with my money. The Bitcoin Fog thing was an exception so I can have clean coins and even then I didn't put that many coins through it and didn't leave them there for very long.
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Surely the built in bitcoin wallets are not visible to outsiders? I transfer mine from my online bitcoin wallet where I buy them straight into my sr account. Not going to lie im a lazy bastard and it was such a novelty being able to actually order on here I guessIi always told myself id start being more secure I guess I just havent
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So here's the deal: blockchain.info records the address that reported a transaction first. Now, that's *it's* idea of the first reporting address. If you're connected to one of their bitcoin programs, and you report it to them, then that'll be you.
But if you're not connected to them, and you make a transaction from your local client, they'll record whoever they first see report said transaction. I've made almost a dozen bitcoin transactions and they've never gotten my address as the first reporting address. Does that mean you'll be so lucky? Fuck if I know. My experience could be a one-in-a-billion statistical fluke. I can't say.
But anyway, yes. If someone really, really, *really* wanted to track you down... *and* they knew which coins belonged to you in the first place... they could find you by getting a court order to examine the pool's records, I would think. But fuck man, that would cost so much money and take so much time and effort that I don't see them doing that unless they mistake you for DPR or something.
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Doesn't the standard Bitcoin client have an option to connect to the network through tor? And if not I'm sure you can configure it so that it does.
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Doesn't the standard Bitcoin client have an option to connect to the network through tor? And if not I'm sure you can configure it so that it does.
Yeah. It does. You could do it that way... I've tried it and don't bother with it. Besides, I'm kind of a Bitcoin enthusiast anyway, so I don't worry about hiding my interest in them. They're cool :P
Don't bother syncing the blockchain that way or anything. Slow as Hell.
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Have a look at the file debug.log in the .bitcoin directory. You can see the IP addresses of the other bitcoin nodes you connect to - and they can see you. Its quite possible that government snoops might be running large numbers of bitcoin nodes for the purpose of recording the originating IP of bitcoin transactions. I don't have any evidence that this is so , but it seems possible. The solution is to run bitcoin-qt through tor, that way your transaction will appear to originate from bellarus or ghana or whatever tor exit node you happen to be using. You dont really have to run through tor all the time - you can DL the blockchain using your real IP - since it would not be associated with any specific transaction. Also if you are setting up a new install of bitcoin-qt , you can use the file bootstrap.dat to provide part of the blockchain and speed up the syncing - but it still took several days for me.
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Don't bother syncing the blockchain that way or anything. Slow as Hell.
Actually it's not really slow, it's ok (depending on the nodes).
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Settings -> Network
[ ] Map port using UPNP
[X] Connect through SOCKS proxy
Proxy IP: 127.0.0.1
Port: 9050
SOCKS Version: 5