Silk Road, a drug & illegal services website, has somehow been reborn a month after being seized by the Feds.

The Feds may have taken down Silk Road, the online black market that's been coined the "Amazon of illegal drugs," but a little over a month later, it's re-emerged.

Not long after the bust, select users on the site received an email from a former active Silk Road user asking the community to help rebuild. The authenticity of the new forums was endorsed by former Silk Road user "Libertas."

Some users who wanted to be a part of the rebuilding gained access to "the Vendor Roundtable," a forum that outlined the details behind the launch of the new Silk Road. The administrator also called on users to volunteer for a "communication specialist" position in charge of organizing operations. "You will be assigned work to perform based on what needs to be done," read an email reviewed by CNNMoney.

Silk Road 2.0 emerged Wednesday alongside a number of other sites offering similar services.
The new Silk Road, like the original, offers everything from prescription medication to heroin.
"Silk Road is back up," a Twitter user who appears to be the owner of the new site tweeted. "Deja vu anyone? #weriseagain." The new Silk Road owner also took on the pseudonym of former leader Ross Ulbricht, Dread Pirate Roberts.

According to a former Silk Road user, the site was rebuilt by most of the major players who were heavily involved in day-to-day operations of the former site.

"Silk Road was something that had popularity that made it easy for people to continue down that path. As long as you can convince the bulk of the biggest buyers and sellers to move over to the new platform, it doesn't matter what it's called."

Before the original Silk Road was seized by the Feds, it had become one of the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplaces on the Internet, according to FBI Special Agent Christopher Tarbell.

But it certainly wasn't the only one. Other sites, including BlackMarket Reloaded and the Sheep Marketplace, have also been looking to attract sellers and buyers.

"Later on, newer versions that have improved in some way will pop up and regain the trust," another former Silk Road user told CNNMoney.

A priority for the reborn Silk Road is information security. The people rebuilding it are baking security measures into the site's code.

Source: CNN Money

You can buy anything online. Apparently that includes drugs, assassins, and firearms...

According to the sealed complaint filed by the FBI, federal agents arrested Ross William Ulbricht on Tuesday afternoon, charging him with narcotics trafficking, computer hacking and money laundering.

The FBI also seized the Silk Road website, replacing its homepage with a banner noting as much.

Since its 2011 inception, Silk Road has been the go-to black market for all sorts of illegal products and services. Its draw? The online marketplace offered an easy way to find goods and services -- and transact the money in secret. The site had 957,079 registered users, according to the FBI.

The site was operated on an anonymous network known as Tor, making activity on Silk Road virtually untraceable. The only money accepted on Silk Road was the digital currency bitcoin, adding an additional layer of anonymity to buyers and sellers.

Over the past two and a half years, the FBI said the site generated revenue worth more than 9.5 million bitcoins -- valued at $1.3 billion.

The FBI said Ulbricht's net worth was essentially his value in Silk Road's commissions, which totaled more than 600,000 bitcoins ($85 million).

Silk Road wasn't restricted to illegal drugs. The FBI says it was also used to trade firearms, hire assassins and employ hackers.

Source: CNN