Hackers target Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht’s legal fees fundraising campaign

By Jonathan Keane January 9, 2017

Image used with permission by copyright holder

free ross ulbricht hackers — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Free Ross, a fundraising campaign to help the defense of imprisoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, was the target of hackers but since last week, it has regained control of its various accounts.

The Free Ross campaign is run by the family of Ulbricht, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2015 for operating the dark web bazaar Silk Road. The money raised was to fund his appeal of the sentence. However, the campaign sent a message out to all donors and supporters to cease making donations for the time being as hackers had set their sights on its accounts and the money within them.

Recommended Videos

“Friends, we are sad to inform you that we have been a target of a terrible hack. Please do not make any donations to Free Ross at this time,” said the family in a Facebook post recently. Reportedly, the hacker(s) gained access to its email, PayPal, Twitter, and bitcoin wallet accounts, and sent donation solicitations to the group’s contacts.

A supporter of the campaign, Roger Ver, took to Reddit shortly after to explain how someone had contacted him claiming to be Ulbricht’s mother, Lyn Ulbricht, and asking for a loan. “I knew right away that it wasn’t her due to the horrible English. Whoever the hackers are, they aren’t native English speakers,” he said.

Ver, who is also a prominent bitcoin startup investor, followed up on Twitter to warn users about the hack and denounce the hackers. “Hackers that prey upon those who are already dealing with so much heartache deserve all of our contempt,” he wrote.

According to Ver, there are further concerns that the hackers may have gained access to the cell phone accounts of someone from the campaign in order to cross any SMS two-factor authentication hurdles on the other accounts.

Free Ross has since said that even though hackers appeared to breach its PayPal accounts and bitcoin, no funds have been stolen but donors should be wary.

“Our PayPal account is secure and safe to donate through,” the group said in one of its latest updates after the breach. “Our bitcoin is safe, but we’re in the process of regaining access to the frozen account, so please wait to give bitcoin donations. We’ll announce when this is done.”

Ulbricht was sentenced to life without parole in the summer of 2015 for founding and operating the Silk Road, which facilitated online drugs and arms sales via the dark web. His lawyers are currently building an appeal.

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Jonathan is a freelance technology journalist living in Dublin, Ireland. He's previously written for publications and sites…

Computing

Get up to $900 off the Dell XPS 15 and Dell XPS 17 today

It’s all change at Dell this year with the Dell XPS 16 replacing the Dell XPS 17 and the Dell XPS 15 gradually seeing fewer updates. That means if you’re still keen to snag a Dell XPS 15 or 17, your chance to do so is running out. That’s why it’s great to see some excellent laptop deals for both models with up to $900 to be saved at the moment. If you’re looking for a new laptop, read on while we guide you through what each laptop has to offer.
Dell XPS 17 -- $1,949, was $2,849

The Dell XPS 17 remains a good option for anyone seeking a powerful laptop that works well as a desktop replacement. It has a 13th-generation Intel Core i7-13700H processor with a massive 32GB of memory so it’s ideal for all kinds of productivity-based tasks such as if you need to manage many spreadsheets at once or if you just prefer to have a lot of windows open at once. It also has 1TB of SSD storage while it can handle plenty of gaming too thanks to its Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card. Its display is a 17-inch full HD+ model with 1920 x 1200 resolution, anti-glare properties, and 500 nits of brightness so it looks great. Other quality of life improvements include plenty of USB-C ports, up to 14 hours of battery life, a great cooling system, and a form factor that means it squeezes a 17-inch display into a 15-inch form size. It also has a large edge-to-edge backlit keyboard, comfortable touchpad, and large keycaps so it feels good to work on as you’d expect from the makers of some of the best laptops.

Computing

This Dell gaming laptop with an RTX 3050 is discounted to $700

You don't need to spend thousands of dollars to be able to get a decent gaming laptop, as there are budget-friendly options like the Dell G15 with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 graphics card. It's currently even cheaper at just $700, following a $200 discount on its original price of $900. We're not sure how much time is remaining on this offer though, so if you think this is the perfect gaming laptop for you, stop hesitating and proceed with the purchase immediately to make sure that you don't miss out on the savings.

Buy Now

Computing

Intel’s big bet on efficient GPUs might actually work

Intel has a lot riding on its next-gen Battlemage graphics architecture, and a very early benchmark shows some promising signs for performance. An Intel Lunar Lake CPU packing a low-power integrated Battlemage GPU was reportedly spotted in the SiSoftware benchmark database. It boasts not only higher performance than Intel's Meteor Lake chips, but also much better efficiency.

User @miktdt on X (formerly Twitter) spotted the result, which appears to come from an early qualification sample of the HP Spectre x360 14. The benchmark picked up that the laptop was using a Lunar Lake CPU, which is said to come with the Xe2-LPG architecture, a lower-power version of Battlemage.