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stormwyrm [soylentnews.org] writes:

The US Department of Justice managed to unravel an infamous dark web child-porn website, called "Welcome to Video", leading to the arrest of 337 people in 18 countries. They managed to do this not by breaking any encryption that was used but by tracing the Bitcoin transactions the site used for payment, and following the money. From CNN's report: [cnn.com]

For almost three years, "Welcome To Video" was a covert den for people who traded in clips of children being sexually assaulted.

There, on the darknet's largest-known site of child exploitation videos, hundreds of users from around the world accessed material that showed the sexual abuse of children as young as six months old.

Then it all began to unravel.

On Wednesday, the United States' Department of Justice (DOJ) revealed how it had followed a trail of bitcoin transactions to find the suspected administrator of the site: A 23-year-old South Korean man named Jong Woo Son.

But the case is much bigger than just one man. Over the almost three years that the site was online, users downloaded files more than one million times, according to a newly unsealed DOJ indictment. At least 23 children in the US, Spain and the United Kingdom who were being abused by the users of the site have been rescued, the DOJ said in a press release.

More coverage here [forbes.com], here [yahoo.com], and here [wired.com]. The indictment for Jong Woo-Son is here [documentcloud.org]. From Schneier on Security [schneier.com].

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