The NSA Worked To 'Track Down' Bitcoin Users, Snowden Documents Reveal (theintercept.com)

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The NSA Worked To 'Track Down' Bitcoin Users, Snowden Documents Reveal (theintercept.com)

Posted by msmash on Tuesday March 20, 2018 @05:24AM from the i-know-what-you-did-there dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Classified documents provided by the whistleblower Edward Snowden show the National Security Agency worked urgently to target Bitcoin users around the world -- and wielded at least one mysterious source of information to "help track down senders and receivers of Bitcoins," according to a top-secret passage in an internal NSA report dating to March 2013. The data source appears to have leveraged NSA's ability to harvest and analyze raw, global internet traffic while also exploiting an unnamed software program that purported to offer anonymity to users, according to other documents.

Although the agency was interested in surveilling some competing cryptocurrencies, "Bitcoin is #1 priority," a March 15, 2013 internal NSA report stated. The documents indicate that "tracking down" Bitcoin users went well beyond closely examining Bitcoin's public transaction ledger, known as the Blockchain, where users are typically referred to through anonymous identifiers; the tracking may also have involved gathering intimate details of these users' computers. The NSA collected some Bitcoin users' password information, internet activity, and a type of unique device identification number known as a MAC address, a March 29, 2013 NSA memo suggested. In the same document, analysts also discussed tracking internet users' internet addresses, network ports, and timestamps to identify "BITCOIN Targets."

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Only 4 out of 15? by gatfirls · 2018-03-20 05:33 · Score: 3, Insightful

I think we can do better than that. When I come here I want the entire 1st page of articles to be about bitcoin.
is it me by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 05:33 · Score: 4, Insightful

or does there seem to be a concerted effort to stop crypto currencies before they become more of a thing
1. Re:is it me by dasgoober · 2018-03-20 06:00 · Score: 2
  
  Used to be that the way to discover the perpetrators of crime or interrupt crime was to follow or stop the flow money.
  Bitcoin makes that a lot more difficult.
2. Re:is it me by gatfirls · 2018-03-20 06:02 · Score: 1
  
  It is you, well you and every other person on the internet who thinks bitcoin was shat out by jesus and anyone who says anything untoward is guilty of the highest orders of heresy.
3. Re:is it me by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 06:03 · Score: 1
  
  The easiest way to topple a country is to subvert its currency. No bloodshed or tanks required.
  It's a big reason we dedicate the Secret Service to preserving ours.
4. Re: is it me by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 06:07 · Score: 0
  
  For now. Governments are stating to adopt them. Serialized and traceable currency has its benefits. Anonymity need not be part of the platform.
5. Re:is it me by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 06:08 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  The article details how Bitcoin makes discovering criminals more easy.
6. Re:is it me by neilo_1701D · 2018-03-20 06:28 · Score: 1
  
  they're retard-coins, they will never be "a thing"
  cointards?
7. Re:is it me by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 06:43 · Score: 1
  
  With all due respect - how the FUCK does it make it more difficult? Public Ledgers are like taking your bank statement, stripping off the part where it says your name, and posting it to the internet for the rest of time. ANY SINGLE identifiable transaction can then de-identify the whole record. Oh, its just this list of 1000 anonymous transactions involving drugs... and the one guy at the leftmost seat at the bar on Tuesday afternoon.
  In some ways, BitCoin is the devil (non-centralized banking). In some ways, BitCoin is a godsend (every transaction on Silk Road!).
8. Re: is it me by Immerman · 2018-03-20 06:58 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  As a matter of fact, anonymity is an extremely challenging feature to add. Certainly Bitcoin never really attempted it, despite all the early hype to the effect that it did.
  
  --
  --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
9. Re:is it me by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 07:14 · Score: 0
  
  Only if there is more than one transaction associated with a bitcoin address. Otherwise it's one anonymous transaction.
10. Re:is it me by quantaman · 2018-03-20 07:18 · Score: 1
  
  or does there seem to be a concerted effort to stop crypto currencies before they become more of a thing
  Probably.
  But I think an intelligence agency has other legitimate motives for trying to track down users of a pseudo-anonymous money transfer system.
  
  --
  I stole this Sig
11. Re:is it me by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 08:05 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah, no. One blind hooker in the world does not mean that there are no hookers who could pick you out of a police lineup.
12. Re: is it me by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 08:45 · Score: 0
  
  How are you nodded up? Bit coin makes it trivially easy compared to other payment forms. Once a wallet is Used, boom, that money is traceable.
13. Re: is it me by The+voice+of+Reason. · 2018-03-20 08:52 · Score: 1
  
  Crypto without "decentralization" (and thus the possibility of censorship resistant and anonymous transactions) is just digital currency, which governments have been trying to make happen for 30 years already. The hype around crypto is convenient and timely momentum to co-opt for their much older objectives.
  Decentralization is a mirage, but it's the mirage that distinguishes "cryptocurrency" from "digital currency which happens to involve cryptography"
14. Re:is it me by nonBORG · 2018-03-20 10:23 · Score: 1
  
  No that is you. It is just that crypto currencies are a buzz word so every article (good or bad) makes it to the front page (so to speak.) If this article seems bad to you then just take note that when crytpo currencies fall to page 3 their value will drop due to a significant amount of their value being derived from people buying them in a bigger fool scenario and every article that gets published only helps the buzz even if negative. It has to be extremely damming to actually have a significant negative effect.
  
  This article will have a small positive effect (on price/popularity) by checking my buzz meter for article effect. Remember that emotional spending decisions are not taking the facts into account. Only people worried about this really is criminals (and tax evaders) who probably dropped Bitcoin a while back to instead have blood soaked cash as a primary means of exchange, except for ransomware operators.
  
  --
  You can't handle the truth! - Because I don't post left all my comments get modded down, bye bye Karma.
15. Re:is it me by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 14:34 · Score: 0
  
  It's really easy for a legislator to become biased against crypto currencies when your children cry after a new GPU that is not available anywhere.
16. Re:is it me by mikael · 2018-03-20 16:09 · Score: 1
  
  For someone wanting to receive money via Bitcoin, it's easy to create an anonymous account, get Bitcoins deposited to that account. The hard part is getting the value converted into real money. That requires a broker. Then it becomes identifiable as to where the money came from. Usually they will be online. You would need a real-world currency cash transfer to be anonymous. Some convenience stores have ATM machines to do this.
  Sending money involves transferring money into a Bitcoin account, requiring a broker to transfer that currency into a Bitcoin account. Same rules apply with conversion of real-world cash into Bitcoins.
  
  --
  Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
17. Re: is it me by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 19:27 · Score: 0
  
  True. Anonymity is gone as soon as you order a pizza to your house.
Bitcoin is not and has never BEEN anonymous by Danathar · 2018-03-20 05:37 · Score: 3, Informative

Just sayin. It's been well known and if somebody got in thinking that bitcoin was anonymous then they were fooling themselves.
1. Re:Bitcoin is not and has never BEEN anonymous by bobbied · 2018-03-20 05:48 · Score: 1
  
  Just sayin. It's been well known and if somebody got in thinking that bitcoin was anonymous then they were fooling themselves.
  (sarc) But, but.... That's what they SAID it was in all the PR about BitCoin. Are you saying they LIED to me? (/sarc)
  I remember when the common story was about how BitCoin was anonymous, unregulated, and totally secure because it wasn't managed by some centralized government. Except for the last thing, none of it was true. Now that last item is up for debate as governments around the world do their best to regulate it.
  
  --
  "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
2. Re:Bitcoin is not and has never BEEN anonymous by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 06:59 · Score: 0
  
  Worst case, they track it to your UNIQUE mac address.
  Article and writer are stupid.
Agreed by ArchieBunker · 2018-03-20 05:47 · Score: 1

Monero is for anonymous use.

--
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
1. Re:Agreed by JeffSh · 2018-03-20 06:04 · Score: 2
  
  with a globally aware sigint full take system, NOTHING is anonymous.
  so long as their is signals, there will be intelligence. the only way around it is to create a protocol that is so noisy that the signal is obfuscated. even that is counterable though of course.
2. Re:Agreed by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 06:34 · Score: 0
  
  Not really, if you create a decentralized network between n endpoints (for large n) with a bandwidth that is much higher than what is transmitted, and continuously feed random data when no encrypted data is transmitted, and you have a good key exchange infrastructure and onion routing, and you do all of this the right way, then it will be very hard to find out who sends what to whom at what time among those endpoints.
3. Re: Agreed by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 07:43 · Score: 0
  
  Well, only if the unicorns are at least a vague shade of pink obviously.
Satoshi? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 05:48 · Score: 0

In other words, they've known who Satoshi Nakamoto really is for years...
1. Re: Satoshi? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 10:46 · Score: 0
  
  The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing everyone he didn't exist.
2. Re:Satoshi? by YukariHirai · 2018-03-20 12:01 · Score: 1
  
  If I were a betting man, I'd bet that a future generation's Edward Snowden will leak documents showing that Satoshi Nakamoto was on the NSA's payroll from the get-go.
Public ledger by DrYak · 2018-03-20 05:54 · Score: 1

thinking that bitcoin was anonymous then they were fooling themselves.
...and also completely ignoring the specs.
By *design*, the whole "distributed trust" of bitcoin comes from the blockchain, a public ledger of which each (full) node on the bitcoin network has a full copy. What did you expect ?
The point of the bitcoin protocole was never anonymity, it was always the absence of a central authority (in theory - some big mining pool are close to it).
---
(yup, it uses cryptographic public key, instead of your actual real-world identity, so there some minimal level of pseudonymity.
That just means that your neighbor Joe Sixpack will have a hard day to guess your transactions.
A large actor with enough ressource (motivated police force) can unmask transaction by correlating with real world events (bitcoin payment leading to product shipped to real-world addresses).
For an even larger actor with even more ressources - like the NSA - unmasking bitcoin transaction is probably a walk in the park).

--
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The time to start to really worry by bobstreo · 2018-03-20 05:54 · Score: 1

Is when there is a concerted effort to eliminate cash.
They can track and do all the metrics they want on my debit purchases of chicken breasts, pasta and tomato paste.
1. Re: The time to start to really worry by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 06:34 · Score: 0
  
  You think they cant extrapolate your weekly weed purchase? Think again.
2. Re:The time to start to really worry by mukinrestak · 2018-03-20 07:41 · Score: 1
  
  There already is a push to eliminate cash. Just take a look at India.
Low hanging fruit by rsilvergun · 2018-03-20 05:55 · Score: 2

it's pretty well established that bitcoin's being used for illegal activity (Drugs, money laundering, prostitution, etc, etc). It's also pretty well established that it's not hard to trace a bitcoin transaction and that once your name's tied to a wallet everything that wallet did leads back to you.

The investigators are supposed to get results, and these would be easy results to get. So yeah, no kidding they targeted bitcoin users.

--
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Shame on the Intercept by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 05:56 · Score: 0

Ir's been 4 years since the Snowden Leaks, and it took this long for the Intercept to decide this was worth reporting?
Not to mention, the documents they are releasing are so heavily redacted, it's comical. That level of redaction with entire pages blacked out is what I expect from the government, not journalists.
1. Re:Shame on the Intercept by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 06:04 · Score: 0
  
  Of course the NSA was keeping an eye on an attempt to move money around anonymously, no story here. It's not and never was worth reporting.
  This is just continuing the slow release of documents in an attempt to keep Snowden in the news. But the world has moved on, nobody cares about him anymore.
2. Re:Shame on the Intercept by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 06:36 · Score: 0
  
  Speak for yourself. 4 years later the word "Snowden" is still a regular search term of mine on google news.
3. Re:Shame on the Intercept by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 07:51 · Score: 0
  
  Edward! Good to see you here, man. How are those Russian lessons coming?
4. Re:Shame on the Intercept by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 09:43 · Score: 0
  
  They were going fine until my new classmate who insists on being called "The Donald" showed up at the end of 2016
5. Re: Shame on the Intercept by Type44Q · 2018-03-20 09:52 · Score: 1
  
  Are you fucking kidding?? You're in the wrong place.
The Hunt For Child Pornographers by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 06:29 · Score: 0

You're either with us or the terrists!
Freedom no longer exist. by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 06:31 · Score: 0

It a god damn lie to say it does.
1. Re: Freedom no longer exist. by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 06:47 · Score: 0
  
  Everything is relative and regulated including freedom
YOU FAIL IT! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 06:59 · Score: 0

the obvious correct phrasing of your "thought" should read:

lock up Trump first, go through due process second.

You failure shames your clan.
To fail so utterly and completely, you must be trolling.
It's you by rsilvergun · 2018-03-20 07:35 · Score: 1

there's been multiple reports from the current administration in America and even a few overseas where they've said they're trying to keep their hands off so they don't kill a nascent industry. Everybody knows crypto-currencies are being used mostly for illegal activity but they've been turning a blind eye in the hopes that they'll grow out of it like a phase and move on to more productive/better things.

--
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
1. Re:It's you by YukariHirai · 2018-03-20 11:48 · Score: 1
  
  It's a rather naive hope; to date the only use case where it offers any kind of meaningful advantage over other payment options is online trade of illicit goods and services. For anything where (pseudo-)anonymity isn't a high priority, the cons heavily outweigh the pros.
Has it really come to this? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 07:52 · Score: 0

I have never posted to /. before, despite being a lurker for more than 10 years. The day I see a phrase like: "and a type of unique device identification number known as a MAC address" in a /. post is the day I think /. has completed it's user base transition from a specialized community of semi-experienced enthusiasts to just another "tech" themed BuzzFeed....
1. Re:Has it really come to this? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 08:19 · Score: 0
  
  Slashdot still has a "tech" theme? Who knew?
2. Re:Has it really come to this? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 09:48 · Score: 0
  
  Slashdot ever had a tech theme?
  and it's user base was semi-experienced enthusiasts?
  that's just crazy talk!
3. Re: Has it really come to this? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 10:50 · Score: 0
  
  This. That was my exact same thought. Any self respecting slashdotter should already know what a MAC address is.
4. Re: Has it really come to this? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 11:15 · Score: 0
  
  Does it come with special sauce?
When are you people going to learn? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 08:32 · Score: 0

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are for criminal activity and should not be used by law-abiding citizens unless you want to be swept up with the criminals and your life sifted through. You WILL be found guilty of one thing or another, one way or another. It's too late; criminals, druggies, pedophiles; they've ruined it for everyone, regardless of the initial innocence of the invention of cryptocurrency; it's time to put it away.
1. Re: When are you people going to learn? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 11:16 · Score: 0
  
  Replace bitcoin with cash. Hmmmm.
Cloudflare+NSA = Mt.Gox heist by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 08:39 · Score: 0

Mt.Gox let Cloudflare in by using their services, NSA wanted in, and as an American company Cloudflare could either comply, or their execs could see jail-time for "endangering the security of the nation" and that old bullshit.
1. Re: Cloudflare+NSA = Mt.Gox heist by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 10:55 · Score: 0
  
  I actually got some random documents in the post in Japanese after that to apologize. Only had about 0.01BTC there at the time but it put me off mining any more. Still got a working account on Slush pool too but never hit the threshold to withdraw the funds. Hey ho, live n learn.
Asking the Tax Man by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 11:12 · Score: 0

How about just reading the tax reports? After all, not reporting your BitCoin income would be tax avoidance and circumventing money laundering regulations when the amounts are large enough and nobody ever does that.
when are we going to execute everyone at the NSA by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 12:43 · Score: 0

...for treason and illegal wiretapping?
Shouldn't be hard by Anonymous Coward · 2018-03-20 20:02 · Score: 0

How do you find bitcoin users? Don't worry, they'll let you know themselves, loudly.