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Deanonymizing Tor: Your Bitcoin Transactions May Come Back To Haunt You (wired.com)
jwhyche, Slashdot reader #6,192, writes:
If you bought some illegal narcotics off Silk Road or even gave money to Wikileaks. Researchers at Qatar University and Hamad Bin Khalifa University have been able to link these transactions with real world identities. They have been able to do this even if the transactions are years old. Their research shows how easy it is to link accounts to these transactions without using any of the tools available to law enforcement like search warrants or subpoenas.
The researchers started with 88 unique bitcoin addresses from Tor hidden services, and then searched 5 billion tweets and 1 million pages on the Bitcoin Talk forum -- ultimately linking 125 unique users to 20 Tor hidden services. "Bitcoin addresses should always be considered exploitable," the researchers conclude, "as they can be used to deanonymize users retroactively."
Their paper is titled "When a Small Leak Sinks a Great Ship: Deanonymizing Tor Hidden Service Users Through Bitcoin Transactions Analysis," and Wired summarizes one of their conclusions. "Even deleting profile information that includes bitcoin addresses may not be enough if a post has been cached or captured by services like the Internet Archive, they point out. 'If you're vulnerable now, you're vulnerable in the future.'"
The researchers started with 88 unique bitcoin addresses from Tor hidden services, and then searched 5 billion tweets and 1 million pages on the Bitcoin Talk forum -- ultimately linking 125 unique users to 20 Tor hidden services. "Bitcoin addresses should always be considered exploitable," the researchers conclude, "as they can be used to deanonymize users retroactively."
Their paper is titled "When a Small Leak Sinks a Great Ship: Deanonymizing Tor Hidden Service Users Through Bitcoin Transactions Analysis," and Wired summarizes one of their conclusions. "Even deleting profile information that includes bitcoin addresses may not be enough if a post has been cached or captured by services like the Internet Archive, they point out. 'If you're vulnerable now, you're vulnerable in the future.'"
Wow, Bitcoin seems very valuable as an anonymous payment system which is later linked to your real identity and publicized.
I'd happily trade $20,000 for one of these newfangled bitcoins, especially given the elevated risk of theft from the poorly secured bitcoin exchanges.
HAHAHAHAHA
FWIW you can easily choose a one-time-use bitcoin address to deal with this problem. Some people advocate using a different address for each transaction (for example, if you are selling a lot of things, give each customer a different address, that way you can tell who has paid you).
OTOH bitcoin transactions are inherently traceable, so even if there's no known way to determine who you are at this moment, in the future someone might figure out a way.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
how come no one can catch these supposed hackers who make off with millions of dollars of coin?
on the other hand i always knew this kind of shit was going to happen so i never used it. only the paranoid survive as andy grove said.
This is excellent. It should make it a lot easier to hunt down ransomware authors and identity thieves. I support deanonymizing those individuals and then allowing vigilante justice to occur.
.. keep a permanent record of all transactions allows this to happen. It's why Bitcoin is stupid. Why would you ever keep a 'hard' copy of everyone's financial transactions forever? It's worse than any other fiat money!
And totally coincidentally it's served as a great tool for the NSA to get the international underworld, and terrorist rings, to identify themselves? Though it's inconceivable that anyone could have anticipated this so as to use it as a financial honey trap. It would take oodles of time, lots of resources, and a disregard for cost. ;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Monero is where the darknet markets are moving to, away from Bitcoin. The blockchain is itself encrypted, and soon it will be integrated with I2P
Part of the Second American Revolution!
But is it saying they just searched for idiots that publicly posted their bitcoin address under their real name? Wouldn't that be like tracking down a phone number to it's owner because they stupidly posted it publicly somewhere on the web?
It can't be that simple if it's called research, can it?
The only transaction that would appear is the Bitcoin going to a darkweb market, right? There is nothing inherently illegal in transferring money to a market. The transaction, if any, within the market would be invisible? Asking for a friend.
It seems strange to equate this with buying drugs and other illicit activity. Would many of you consider giving money to wikileaks a negative thing? Something that a person should hide? I'm just curious.
1) Buying illegal narcotics on the Silk Road
2) Giving money to Wikileaks
#DeleteChrome
If you are linked to the f*cking address of course you will be deanonymized. That doesn't mean those who weren't idiots have been deanonymized. Bitcoin was more about who was in control rather than anonymity. Newer crypto currencies have focused on the anonymity problem. Zen Cash and pretty much anything that adopts the Zero Coin protocol should be secure. Everything else was more or less mixing money to make it harder to trace in a more traditional money laundering sense. If you are going to claim anonymity you better show me the math and then the users are *still* going to have to not be stupid when it comes to use. If you post your address on a public form no amount of anonymity nor Tor is going to protect you.
Bitcoin is not, and was never intended to be, anonymous. It has always been pretty easy to associate a wallet with a person. Every transaction you make is public record on the Bitcoin blockchain.
They did not deanonymize *TOR*, the onion router network for anonymizing web traffic. They deanonymized Bitcoin transactions.
Tor != Bitcoin.
If you used bitcoin to buy an underage sex slave, or even gave money to Wikileaks...
Do we really have to go through this again?
Bitcoin is NOT anonymous!
If you want anonymity, the upcoming Bitcoin Private coin is for you... it's forking from another coin... ZClassic I think... that uses a zero knowledge proof to obscure the addresses involved in the transaction so that specific transactions cannot be tied to specific wallets or people.
I think the fork is supposed to happen in February some time.
Buying heroin and donating to Wikileaks are morally equivalent.
It's a reasonably standard English idiom, and extremely common in Slashdot writeups, to use constructions of this form: If [bad thing], or even if [fairly innocent thing], then [bad consequence either way].
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
You can't expect anonymity when you associate the address with your identity. How is this news?
>being a sufficient tool to facetweet reddiblrgram
>using easily-searched matchups on a bitcoin forum
>if not outright identical username on bitcoin forum (jesus christ)
Keep rationalizing your socnets, folks.
It's comin' to get choo...
You are stupid, people and merchants stopped using Bitcoin that's why it's less congested.
The moment people start using Bitcoin again the fee will go up again.
Bitcoin Cash is what Bitcoin used to be before Blockstream fucked it up.
Bitcoin Cash, always 0.0001 fee, always fast, always included in the next block.
you can be deanonymized.
good to know
with native obfs4 implementation and TOR integration. BOOM!
You're still making up imaginary wealth, to devalue the wealth of everybody else (via inflation), and haven't worked a fucking second for it!
No, the work of sneaking in and stuffing shit into a bag does not qualify. Nor does the work of telling others to do your work for you.
Meanwhile, we here... the normal people, have actually made something of worth for our money. I created toys that allow children with disabilities to do the exercises that cure them while having a lot of fun and staying motivated. Your average Joe next door built the shit that you use, keeps it from breaking down, or even invents and engineers things that permanently improve the world.
You just found a moron to give imaginary glass beads to for more money than you paid for them when you were being the moron.
And for the record: There's nothing wrong with the concept of money, nor the concept of crypto-currencies per se. They're quite nice concepts.
The problems start, when it becomes something representing actual work, and hence actual worth, for some, while being something made up without working, and hence without worth, for others.
Yes, this includes "mining", "management", re-selling, trading, "intellectual property", interest, and any other way banks are allowed to make up money.
The only things of *actual* worth, are natural real resources, like spacetime/-energy/-entropy, and work.
(When you buy a chair, you pay the work of making it, plus the natural resources it was made out of.)
Cash me outside, BitCoin... Cash me outside...
So... what's the takeaway here?
If you're a criminal, don't advertise on the overnet with the same address you're using for crime?
Duh.
I mean, that should be obvious.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Okay, let's have a show of hands- who didn't see this coming?
Anytime anyone claims something is "anonymous" or "untrackable", bet on them being wrong.
There's nothing that's truly "anonymous" or "untrackable" and yet people keep falling for these absurd claims.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
How was this not obvious from the start? Every Bitcoin has an ID of the miner to verify is was created, and the blockchain records every transaction, so the current holder of each coin is known. So once there is an intersection of your wallet with a traceable ID, your cover is blown.