Probing the Mystery of Cryptocurrency Theft: An Investigation into Methods for Cryptocurrency Tainting Analysis

Tironsakkul, Tin; Maarek, Manuel; Eross, Andrea; Just, Mike

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3403656

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…We rely on the principle of tainted flows to trace the coins from source actors. Taint analysis has been used most notably in the context of tracking money from illegal sources [1,3,8,24,32]. However, those works mainly focus on the destination of tainted coins.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Output: edges is the edge list of the payout flow. Our algorithm applies haircut tainting, which assumes that the tainted money is divided equally to all output transactions in proportion to their amount [1,32].…”

Section: Bitcoin Taint Flowmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We subsequently apply whole graph embedding methods to automatically assign taint networks to their origin actor. Beyond the demonstration that each actor has a characteristic flow allowing us to recognize its position in the network [1,22,32], our method can also be helpful for actor tracking as well as actor deanonymization tasks. The embedding of money flows from different actors is a promising feature for downstream tasks in machine learning models to classify the role of actors [15,38] or predict illegal transaction activities in the Bitcoin blockchain [35].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Pattern Analysis of Money Flows in the Bitcoin Blockchain

Tovanich

Cazabet

2023

Complex Networks and Their Applications XI

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Bitcoin is the first and highest valued cryptocurrency that stores transactions in a publicly distributed ledger called the blockchain. Understanding the activity and behavior of Bitcoin actors is a crucial research topic as they are pseudonymous in the transaction network. In this article, we propose a method based on taint analysis to extract taint flows-dynamic networks representing the sequence of Bitcoins transferred from an initial source to other actors until dissolution. Then, we apply graph embedding methods to characterize taint flows. We evaluate our embedding method with taint flows from top mining pools and show that it can classify mining pools with high accuracy. We also found that taint flows from the same period show high similarity. Our work proves that tracing the money flows can be a promising approach to classifying source actors and characterizing different money flow patterns.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Bitcoin Taint Flowmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Pattern Analysis of Money Flows in the Bitcoin Blockchain

Tovanich

Cazabet

2023

Complex Networks and Their Applications XI

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“…By providing a fresh address for each donor, the website grants them a certain level of privacy, as the newly-generated receiving address is not overtly linked to the entity it belongs to [16]. However, despite the simplicity of generating new addresses, studies show that the majority of Bitcoin users repeatedly reuse the same address, which suggests that the majority of Bitcoin users do not place a high value on anonymity [4].…”

Section: Generating New Addressesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Bitcoin, and many other cryptocurrencies that followed, gained infamy as vehicles and abettors of illegal activity. Dark-web sites like the (now defunct) Silk Road advertised anything from drugs to assassinations in exchange for this new currency [4]. There are numerous ongoing attacks were hackers encrypt the victim's machines and demand ransoms in Bitcoin [5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revealing and Concealing Bitcoin Identities: A Survey of Techniques

Bergman

Rajput

2021

Proceedings of the 3rd ACM International Symposium on Blockchain and Secure Critical Infrastructure

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Bitcoin remains the most widely used cryptocurrency. It has attracted users from tech enthusiasts to commercial investors to criminals, in no small part due to its reputation for anonymity. While not designed primarily for privacy, Bitcoin's architecture contains several provisions that can be exploited by criminals to conduct illegal activity including money laundering and collecting payments from ransomware and scams. Since Bitcoin's creation in 2008, various groups such as law enforcement, lawyers, criminals and privacy-focused Bitcoin users have been locked in a struggle between attempts to reveal hidden Bitcoin users' identities and attempts to keep those identities concealed. We present a survey of the techniques used within Bitcoin to reveal or conceal users' identities. We provide an easy to understand explanations of how these techniques work and provide a cross reference of which revealing techniques are effective for specific concealing techniques. CCS CONCEPTS• Security and privacy~Human and societal aspects of security and privacy; • Social and professional topics~Computing / technology policy~Government technology policy~Governmental regulations; • Security and privacy~Human and societal aspects of security and privacy~Privacy protections;

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Transaction Tracking Based on Personalized PageRank Algorithm

Wu,

Liu,

et al. 2024

Big Data Management

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Probing the Mystery of Cryptocurrency Theft: An Investigation into Methods for Cryptocurrency Tainting Analysis

Cited by 8 publications

References 17 publications

Pattern Analysis of Money Flows in the Bitcoin Blockchain

Pattern Analysis of Money Flows in the Bitcoin Blockchain

Revealing and Concealing Bitcoin Identities: A Survey of Techniques

Transaction Tracking Based on Personalized PageRank Algorithm

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