Bruce Schneier’s blog put me onto this article, which explains in some depth how with careful detective work, and open-source intelligence (OSINT) made anonymous cryptocurrency transactions not so anonymous. It is a long, but very interesting article but please note the content warning from the Wired website, and do not follow the link if you think the article may upset you:
“CONTENT WARNING: THE story told here includes references to suicide and child abuse, though the abuse is not graphically described.“
Inside the Bitcoin Bust That Took Down the Web’s Biggest Child Abuse Site | WIRED
This is the paper referenced in the article – which is also very interesting (I think it has to win the prize for the academic paper with the most interesting title) and does not need a content warning.
A Fistful of Bitcoins: Characterizing Payments Among Men with No Names (Meiklejohn, et al. 2013)
It has just been pointed out to me, that we should be wait for the sequel, “A Few Bitcoins More…”.
One of the best things I studied at university was OSINT, it was amazing what you could discover by joining together, what appeared to be separate and non-related bits of information, just out there on the internet. This skill has benefited me many times whilst carrying out cyber security investigations for companies.
Clive Catton MSc (Cyber Security) – by-line and other articles
Smart Thinking Solutions supports this UK Government initiative:
Let’s stop abuse together – Stop Abuse Together (campaign.gov.uk)
References
Meiklejohn, S., Pomarole, M., Jordan, G., Levchenko, K., McCoy, D., Voelker, G. M., & Savage, S. (2013, October). A fistful of bitcoins: characterizing payments among men with no names. In Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Internet measurement conference (pp. 127-140).
