Silk Road - a popular black market website where drugs were sold that was shut down earlier this year - is back with a new owner operating under a pseudonym.
Reported ex-owner Ross Ulbricht was arrested in San Francisco in October, and $28 million in bitcoins belonging to him was seized, according to International Business Times, after money laundering conspiracy, narcotics trafficking conspiracy and computer hacking charges were brought against him. The website, which was previously described as the "Amazon of illegal drugs," and the "eBay of illicit substances," was shut down - a notice from the FBI was splashed onto the homepage that read, "This hidden site has been seized."
But now, the website is back, and the message on the main page has been replaced with a taunting memo: "This hidden site has risen again."
Vice reported that the site's new owner, who calls themselves, "Dread Pirate Roberts," gave the publication a peek at the page before its Wednesday official launch.
"The layout is very similar to the previous version's, allowing users to navigate through lists and subsections of a bunch of stuff you'd be unlikely to find anyone selling on the high street," Vice reporter Joseph Cox wrote. "Currently, the majority of listings are drugs and drug paraphernalia, but we can assume that other illegal products and services will be listed once the site is live and vendors know it can be trusted."
Prior to its shut down, Silk Road was open for business for two and a half years. During that time, the website was used by a few thousand drugs dealers who sold their goods to well over a hundred thousand buyers. Users could also pay to organize hits to have people killed through Silk Road.
The new site has upgraded a few aspects while maintaining other features - customers still use a tool called Tor to ensure Internet anonymity, and users still work though Bitcoin, an application for virtual money that keeps the identities of vendors unknown to the buyers. One of the most noted changes is a new security feature that allows customers to use a private PGP encryption key to lock in authenticity of transactions.
