Moneros Decentralized P2P Exchanges: Functionality, Adoption, and Privacy Risks

Privacy-focused cryptocurrencies like Monero remain popular, despite increasing regulatory scrutiny that has led to their delisting from major centralized exchanges. The latter also explains the recent popularity of decentralized exchanges DEXs with no centralized ownership structures. These...

Exploring the Dark Side: OSINT Tools and Techniques for Unmasking Dark Web Operations

On April 5, 2023, the FBI and Dutch National Police announced the takedown of Genesis Market, one of the largest dark web marketplaces. The operation, dubbed "Operation Cookie Monster," resulted in the arrest of 119 people and the seizure of over $1M in cryptocurrency. You can read the FBI's...

The Hunt for the FTX Thieves Has Begun

Mysterious crooks took hundreds of millions of dollars from FTX just as it collapsed. Crypto-tracing blockchain analysis may provide an answer...

FBI Warns Investors to Take Precautions with Decentralized Financial Platforms

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI on Monday warned of cyber criminals increasingly exploiting flaws in decentralized finance DeFi platforms to plunder cryptocurrency. "The FBI has observed cyber criminals exploiting vulnerabilities in the smart contracts governing DeFi platforms to ste...

Karakurt Ensnares Conti, Diavol Ransomware Groups in Its Web

Researchers have found financial and technological links between the Karakurt cybercriminal group and two high-profile ransomware actors that signal a shift in business operations and an expansion of opportunities for the threat actors to target victims, they said. Karakurt—a financially motivate...

Identifying the Person Behind Bitcoin Fog

The person behind the Bitcoin Fog was identified and arrested. Bitcoin Fog was an anonymization service: for a fee, it mixed a bunch of peoples bitcoins up so that it was hard to figure out where any individual coins came from. It ran for ten years. Identifying the person behind Bitcoin Fog serve...