The New York Times claims that something happened this week that changed Bitcoin's reputation as a "secure, decentralized and anonymous" cryptocurrency.
We all know that Bitcoin was originally used by criminals to make illegal transactions without revealing their names or locations. The digital currency quickly became very popular with drug dealers and all those who wanted to hide from the tax authorities.
“This week federal officials were able to recover most of the ransom (in Bitcoin) paid in the recent attack ransomware Colonial Pipeline. Αυτό σημαίνει ότι καταρρίφθηκε μια θεμελιώδη εσφαλμένη αντίληψη για τα κρυπτονομίσματα:
"They are not as difficult to detect as those who use them for illegal transactions."
The fact that federal investigators tracked ransom money through at least 23 different electronic accounts owned by the DarkSide (hacking team) before gaining access to one of the accounts showed that the authorities knew.
"These are digital footprints," said Kathryn Haun, a former federal prosecutor and investor in company venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
"There is a trail and the authorities seem to be able to follow it very well."
Haun added that the speed with which the Ministry of Justice was able to obtain most of the ransom was "pioneering."
On the contrary, he stated that obtaining records from banks often requires months or years of bureaucracy, especially when these banks are abroad.
Detecting a user's transaction history is easy and is done with the public key it has, authorities said.
The confiscation of the ransom, however, requires the acquisition of the private key, which is somewhat more difficult. Of course no one knows how the federal agents managed to get DarkSide's private key.
Justice Department spokesman Marc Raimondi declined to say more about how the F.B.I. obtained DarkSide's private key. According to court documents, investigators had access to the code access to one of the hackers' Bitcoin wallets, but did not detail how they obtained it.
The FBI does not appear to be exploiting any underlying vulnerability in blockchain technology, cryptocurrency experts said. Federal agents could have taken the privates wrenches of DarkSide by planting a spy inside DarkSide's network, hacking the computers that stored their private keys and passwords, or forcing the service who has their private wallet to hand it over via some search warrant.
