@agreenberg and his book Tracers in the Dark really kind of caught me by surprise.

A solid, and good, book worth the investment, and time spent reading.

#MastoBooks #Books #CryptoCurrency #TracersInTheDark

The Bitcoin Blockchain

“It was a permanent record of often-traceable payments that had served as the perfect honeypot, a trap for anyone seeking financial anonymity online in order to commit crime. And it had persisted for years.”

Tracers In The Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency
by Andy Greenberg

“Bitcoin is often portrayed as an untraceable method of payment that facilitates illicit activities by enabling criminals to make and receive payments without being tracked. This depiction implies that users transacting in Bitcoin can do so completely anonymously — that their identities will not be exposed. However, that is not necessarily the case. While Bitcoin offers increased privacy compared to traditional payment methods involving a third-party intermediary such as a credit card provider, it is still not as anonymous as a cash transaction. In fact, there are many ways a person’s identity could potentially be exposed in Bitcoin transactions.”
— FinTech Weekly

The Bitcoin Blockchain — far from being a completely anonymous, distributed ledger of transactions — turned out to be pseudonymous, offering several ways to tie an encrypted transaction to a specific individual.

“But what if the centerpiece of this dark economy held a secret, fatal flaw? What if their currency wasn’t so cryptic after all? An investigator using the right mixture of technical wizardry, financial forensics, and old-fashioned persistence could uncover an entire world of wrongdoing.

Tracers in the Dark is a story of crime and pursuit unlike any other. With unprecedented access to the major players in federal law enforcement and private industry, veteran cybersecurity reporter Andy Greenberg tells an astonishing saga of criminal empires built and destroyed. He introduces an IRS agent with a defiant streak, a Bitcoin-tracing Danish entrepreneur, and a colorful ensemble of hardboiled agents and prosecutors as they delve deep into the crypto-underworld. The result is a thrilling, globe-spanning story of dirty cops, drug bazaars, trafficking rings, and the biggest takedown of an online narcotics market in the history of the Internet.”

I truly enjoyed this engaging page-turner, and found myself looking forward to picking up the book again and rejoining this globe-hopping whack-a-mole adventure.

Over and again, a simple dynamic repeated: a new technology was developed, considered to be rock-solid, but within a few years (or less) turned out to be far weaker than expected: the blockchain, bitcoin mixers, Monero.

Perhaps we might consider looking at an older privacy technology with over 180 years of continual use. There may be something of value there, some aspect useful for our modern needs. Much can go wrong (or right) in 180 years — and 180 years of data is quite a luxury.

#TracersInTheDark
#AndyGreenberg
#BookReview
#BooksOfMastodon
agreenberg@infosec.exchange

Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Crypto - Hear renowned cybersecurity author Andy Greenberg's thoughtful commentary about the "war ... https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2023/02/06/tracers-in-the-dark-the-global-hunt-for-the-crime-lords-of-crypto/ #tracersinthedark #cryptocurrency #andygreenberg #cryptography ##nobackdoors #cybercrime #lawℴ #podcast #tracers

#SilkRoad, Welcome to Video, #AlphaBay. All were taken down. People still believe that using #Tor and #Bitcoin makes them disappear digitally. Now, it doesn‘t. Particularly #Bitcoin is a public ledger. It is NOT anonymous. #chainalysis offers tools to follow the money in the blockchain world. Read the book #TracersInTheDark by @a_greenberg to learn more. It is really worthwhile if this is what you are interested in. I am impressed and thought I would share it

‘Tracers in the Dark’ presents a fun crime story — and lesson in privacy - Want to keep the government from snooping on your transactional h... - https://cointelegraph.com/news/tracers-in-the-dark-presents-a-fun-crime-story-and-lesson-in-privacy #tracersinthedark #andygreenburg #privacy

#InfoSecBookClub
Some great #Infosec related books I read this year. I would highly recommend for anyone interested in #Infosec:

The Devil Never Sleeps by Juliette Kayyem - About getting ready for incidents by assessing where you are and defining that as a ground truth. #TheDevileNeverSleeps

Tracers in the Dark by @agreenberg - About how cryptocurrency can be used to trace criminal activity on the dark web. #TracersInTheDark

I was able to finish #TracersInTheDark by @agreenberg over coffee this morning, and as usual with Andy's books, it is a great read. It covers the evolution of #CryptoCurrency tracing to track down criminals by using actual #TrueCrime investigation reporting. Definitely a read for anyone interested in any of these tags:
#FinancialCrime
#WhiteCollarCrime
#EconomicCrime

Definitely a strong recommendation for #InfoSecBookClub

I consumed the audio version narrated by Ari Fliakos and it was wonderfully narrated too.

Reflecting on #TracersInTheDark. Ethics aside for a moment. If Russian citizens can carry out cyber attacks against US organizations with impunity, due to lack of extradition and law enforcement collaboration between Russia and US, does it also mean that US citizens can attack Russian organizations with the same degree of impunity? :thinking_very_hard:

Finished #TracersInTheDark. An absolutely gripping read. The ending felt a bit "in the air", but hopefully that's just a setup for a sequel. I wouldn't mind an expansion on the rise in privacy coins and the human rights impacts of blockchain tracing vendors. Or maybe a book on how the ransomware problem is finally solved in the future. Whatever it will be, I am definitely looking forward to @agreenberg's next book!

Would be hilarious if Satoshi Nakamoto actually intended Bitcoin to be a honeypot for criminal activity on the dark web. So many arrests from misunderstanding its anonymity (or, rather, lack of thereof) #TracersInTheDark

@muteki I just ordered a signed copy of @agreenberg 's New Book #TracersInTheDark.
https://infosec.exchange/@agreenberg/109393927665202725

Had my first "wait, what" moment on chapter 42 of @agreenberg's #TracersInTheDark book last night. Federal agent travels to a nearby hotel to connect to a darkweb site from a hotel conference room and not a government office, to avoid the risk of site administrators tracking the origin of the connection. That makes sense. But, he then uses a mobile hotspot for the connection, to avoid accessing illegal content over the hotel network. That doesn't make sense. If he was going to use a mobile hotspot anyways, why did he need to travel offsite to avoid attribution? Even if admins could somehow unmask his egress IP through the Tor network, surely they wouldn't be able to triangulate a mobile hotspot that was used for it. Best I can figure, is that the use of a hotspot was a last minute decision, knowing the type of data he was about to download while in the conference room?

P.S. The book has taken the dark turn that the foreword had warned about :blobnotlike:

@agreenberg On chapter 30 this evening, number of "holy shits" is not decreasing. Absolutely gripping storytelling and subject matter. #TracersInTheDark

@agreenberg Ordered! I look forward to reading your next work. I am a huge fan of #Sandworm and can't wait to dive into this one.

#TracersInTheDark

Reading #TracersInTheDark I can't help but wonder if any of the federal agencies that used @internetarchive data to make their multi-million-dollar dark web busts had turned around a donated a couple of millions of the seized funds to help fund the non-profit :blobthinking:​