- <div class="entry">
- <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</a></div>
- <div class="date">29th January 2014</div>
- <div class="body"><p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
-encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
-central control. It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
-activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth. At least
-I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
-details of every transaction are kept forever. This point is
-investigated in
-<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
-from December 2013, in the article
-"<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
-Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
-Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
-Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage. They
-analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
-addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
-of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
-money end up. This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
-
-<p><blockquote>
-<p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
-our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
-activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
-Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
-flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
-address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
-we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
-thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
-mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
-tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
-large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
-from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
-
-<p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
-which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
-the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
-case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
-subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
-stolen bitcoins were deposited. Because such exchanges seem to serve
-as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
-few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
-money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
-present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
-</blockquote><p>
-
-<p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
-transaction log. The 2011 paper
-"<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
-the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
-summarized like this:</p>
-
-<p><blockquote>
-"Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
-complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
-public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
-attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
-public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
-users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
-a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
-allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
-this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
-derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
-two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
-complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
-anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
-techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
-an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
-market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
-</blockquote></p>
-
-<p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
-is anonymous. It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites. Use
-cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
-sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
-
-<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
-activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
-<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
-</div>
- <div class="tags">
-
-
- Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
-
-
- </div>
- </div>
- <div class="padding"></div>
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