Crypto heists are becoming increasingly common, but forensic investigators are getting savvier at figuring out who is behind specific accounts
Ardoino, Tether’s chief technology officer, took note. Typically, when savvy cybercriminals make off with cryptocurrency, they transfer the assets among online wallets through difficult-to-trace transactions. And poof — the money is lost.
Ardoino sprang into action and minutes later froze the assets.
“We were really lucky,” he said. “Minutes after we issued the freezing transaction, we saw the hacker attempt to move out his Teth
We were really lucky,” he said. “Minutes after we issued the freezing transaction, we saw the hacker attempt to move out his Tether. If we had waited five minutes more, all the Tether would be gone.” Two weeks later, Tether released the money to its rightful owners. And after threats from Poly Network, the online bandit gave up the rest.
The seizure pokes a hole in the long-held belief that cryptocurrency is impossible to trace. Cryptocurrency is computer code that allows people to send and receive funds, recording the transactions on a public ledger known as a blockchain, rather than retaining account holder info. Because of the lack of user data, cryptocurrencies like bitcoin have been hailed as a safe haven for criminal activity. Fueled by anonymity, the shadowy industry allows hackers, tax evaders and other bad actors to launder money secretively, outside of the traditional banking system.
Online scammers made off with $2.6 billion in 2020, according to a Chainalysis report. That year, ransomware attacks more than quadrupled.
But forensics investigators are getting savvier at scrupulously mapping activity on blockchains and figuring out who is behind specific accounts. This has sparked a “novel cottage industry of data providers” who are able to track cryptocurrency accounts flagged for illicit activity, said Zachary Goldman, a lawyer at WilmerHale specializing in novel payment technologies. “That’s never really been available before.”
There are hundreds, possibly thousands of cryptocurrencies with hundreds of blockchains, which contain a public record of every crypto transaction made. But Blockchains provide limited public user data and the massive documents, supported via a network of servers, require specialized skills and terabytes of computer storage to download and parse through. This allows criminals to hide behind cryptic account numbers and conceal their assets by swiftly moving them or spreading them across a wide array of wallets.
Blockchain surveillance companies are finding success using software to scrape transactional data on a blockchain, analyze it for suspicious activity — such as accounts connected to illicit behavior on the Dark Web — and help law enforcement agencies track down where the funds end up.
read more at : https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/09/22/stolen-crypto/