8

Leaked Slides Show How Chainalysis Flags Crypto Suspects for Cops

 2 years ago
source link: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/09/21/leaked-slides-show-how-chainalysis-flags-crypto-suspects-for-cops/
Go to the source link to view the article. You can view the picture content, updated content and better typesetting reading experience. If the link is broken, please click the button below to view the snapshot at that time.
neoserver,ios ssh client

Leaked Slides Show How Chainalysis Flags Crypto Suspects for Cops

Walletexplorer.com, a block explorer site secretly operated by Chainalysis, has provided law enforcement with “meaningful leads,” the documents say.

Sep 21, 2021 at 5:42 p.m. UTC
Updated Sep 21, 2021 at 6:27 p.m. UTC

(Getty Images, modified by CoinDesk)

In the battle to link real-world criminals to their anonymous bitcoin troves, Chainalysis has found a “meaningful” edge: a block explorer website that scrapes visitors’ internet protocol (IP) addresses.

According to leaked documents reviewed by CoinDesk, Chainalysis, the largest of the blockchain tracing firms, owns and operates walletexplorer.com. Like other block explorers, the service lets anyone view the history of public cryptocurrency wallet addresses. Chainalysis figures that bad actors would use its site to check transactions without fear of “leaving a ‘footprint’” on crypto exchanges, the documents said.

But where the exchanges – and presumably most block explorers – have no eyes, Chainalysis has set its sights. It “‘scrapes’ the IP addresses of suspicious” users that fall into the honeypot of walletexplorer.com according to the documents.

“Using this dataset we were able to provide law enforcement with meaningful leads related to the IP data associated with an address,” the documents, translated from Italian, say. “It is also possible to conduct a reverse lookup on any known IP address to identify other BTC addresses.”

In doing so, Chainalysis has effectively weaponized an unassuming website without disclosing its ties. It has never publicly associated itself with walletexplorer.com, although a note at the bottom of the site’s homepage says its “author” now works at Chainalysis. The website was created in 2014, according to site registration documents that make no mention of Chainalysis.

A spokesperson for Chainalysis declined to comment.

ORCKU6KNG5DRND75GYMIPINLLE.png

The documents, from a Chainalysis presentation to Italian police investigating the dark web, appeared late Monday on DarkLeaks, itself a dark web site only accessible through anonymizing browsers like Tor. CoinDesk has verified the documents’ authenticity.

The slide deck shines new light on the full range of tools that Chainalysis uses to assist law enforcement in nabbing illicit actors. The company is primarily known for parsing publicly available transaction data rather than using subterfuge.

XV4T63FXS5CPZP6W64M2F3FITM.png

Walletexplorer.com at press time

The documents also show that Chainalysis thinks it can trace transactions in monero (XMR), which many consider to be the cryptocurrency with the strongest privacy defenses.

“Of the cases that Chainalysis worked on in collaboration with law enforcement, we were able to provide usable leads in approximately 65% of cases involving [m]onero,” the documents say.

C6NXEWX4YNGZLBANPJJVBA63XI.png

This is a developing story. Refresh for updates.

UPDATE (Sept. 21, 18:25 UTC): Adds detail about walletexplorer.com in sixth paragraph.

DISCLOSURE

The leader in news and information on cryptocurrency, digital assets and the future of money, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.


Subscribe to The Node, our daily report on top news and ideas in crypto.
By signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk product updates, events and marketing and you agree to our terms of services and privacy policy.

About Joyk


Aggregate valuable and interesting links.
Joyk means Joy of geeK