13 research outputs found
Identifying key players in dark web marketplaces through Bitcoin transaction networks
Dark web marketplaces have been a significant outlet for illicit trade, serving millions of users worldwide for over a decade. However, not all users are the same. This paper aims to identify the key players in Bitcoin transaction networks linked to dark markets and assess their role by analysing a dataset of 40 million Bitcoin transactions involving the 31 major markets in the period 2011–2021. First, we propose an algorithm that categorizes users either as buyers or sellers, and show that a large fraction of the trading volume is concentrated in a small group of elite market participants. We find that the dominance of markets is reflected in trading properties of buyers and sellers. Then, we investigate both market star-graphs and user-to-user networks, and highlight the importance of a new class of users, namely ‘multihomers’, who operate on multiple marketplaces concurrently. Specifically, we show how the networks of multihomers and seller-to-seller interactions can shed light on the resilience of the dark market ecosystem against external shocks. Our findings suggest that understanding the behavior of key players in dark web marketplaces is critical to effectively disrupting illegal activities
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Identifying key players in dark web marketplaces through Bitcoin transaction networks
Dark web marketplaces have been a significant outlet for illicit trade, serving millions of users worldwide for over a decade. However, not all users are the same. This paper aims to identify the key players in Bitcoin transaction networks linked to dark markets and assess their role by analysing a dataset of 40 million Bitcoin transactions involving the 31 major markets in the period 2011–2021. First, we propose an algorithm that categorizes users either as buyers or sellers, and show that a large fraction of the trading volume is concentrated in a small group of elite market participants. We find that the dominance of markets is reflected in trading properties of buyers and sellers. Then, we investigate both market star-graphs and user-to-user networks, and highlight the importance of a new class of users, namely ‘multihomers’, who operate on multiple marketplaces concurrently. Specifically, we show how the networks of multihomers and seller-to-seller interactions can shed light on the resilience of the dark market ecosystem against external shocks. Our findings suggest that understanding the behavior of key players in dark web marketplaces is critical to effectively disrupting illegal activities
Volume and Access Pattern Leakage-abuse Attack with Leaked Documents
Searchable Encryption schemes provide secure search over encrypted databases while allowing admitted information leakages. Generally, the leakages can be categorized into access and volume pattern. In most existing SE schemes, these leakages are caused by practical designs but are considered an acceptable price to achieve high search efficiency. Recent attacks have shown that such leakages could be easily exploited to retrieve the underlying keywords for search queries. Under the umbrella of attacking SE, we design a new Volume and Access Pattern Leakage-Abuse Attack (VAL-Attack) that improves the matching technique of LEAP (CCS ’21) and exploits both the access and volume patterns. Our proposed attack only leverages leaked documents and the keywords present in those documents as auxiliary knowledge and can effectively retrieve document and keyword matches from leaked data. Furthermore, the recovery performs without false positives. We further compare VAL-Attack with two recent well-defined attacks on several real-world datasets to highlight the effectiveness of our attack and present the performance under popular countermeasures
ClaimChain: Improving the Security and Privacy of In-band Key Distribution for Messaging
The social demand for email end-to-end encryption is barely supported by
mainstream service providers. Autocrypt is a new community-driven open
specification for e-mail encryption that attempts to respond to this demand. In
Autocrypt the encryption keys are attached directly to messages, and thus the
encryption can be implemented by email clients without any collaboration of the
providers. The decentralized nature of this in-band key distribution, however,
makes it prone to man-in-the-middle attacks and can leak the social graph of
users. To address this problem we introduce ClaimChain, a cryptographic
construction for privacy-preserving authentication of public keys. Users store
claims about their identities and keys, as well as their beliefs about others,
in ClaimChains. These chains form authenticated decentralized repositories that
enable users to prove the authenticity of both their keys and the keys of their
contacts. ClaimChains are encrypted, and therefore protect the stored
information, such as keys and contact identities, from prying eyes. At the same
time, ClaimChain implements mechanisms to provide strong non-equivocation
properties, discouraging malicious actors from distributing conflicting or
inauthentic claims. We implemented ClaimChain and we show that it offers
reasonable performance, low overhead, and authenticity guarantees.Comment: Appears in 2018 Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society
(WPES'18
Cryptocurrencies in the Digital Age : A Holistic Examination of Technology and Trends
This thesis explores the complex world of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, offering an investigation of their social effects, economic ramifications, and
technical underpinnings. In the introduction, the nature and hypothesis of cryptocurrencies
are explained, along with their inherent advantages and disadvantages,
as well as the current issues that the industry is facing. The main objective of this
thesis is to advance a more logical understanding of the complex interactions among
blockchain technology, cryptographic ideas, and the larger field of digital currency.
A foundational approach is perceived by the mathematical preliminaries part, which
clarifies important cryptographic ideas like symmetric and public-key cryptography,
cryptographic protocols, cryptanalysis, and how they relate to blockchain technology.
In doing so, the thesis establishes the foundation for evaluating the complexities
associated with protecting and authenticating transactions in decentralized
systems. As I move on, the investigation of blockchain technology includes a review
of its design, workings, and uses in various sectors of the economy. The scalability
and performance issues that blockchain is facing are assessed in this section, especially
considering its expanding applications. The concluding segment explores
the wider ramifications of cryptocurrencies on society, summarizing their influence
on society and the dynamic regulatory environment. The dynamic world of cryptocurrencies
and tokens, as well as their technological foundations, economic factors,
adoption trends, legal frameworks, and the crucial problem of energy consumption
from mining operations, are addressed. The thesis’s final remarks provide a succinct
overview of the major discoveries and their possible implications for advancing
blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies in the future. They also synthesize the
insights obtained throughout the thesis
DeFi Security: Turning The Weakest Link Into The Strongest Attraction
The primary innovation we pioneer -- focused on blockchain information
security -- is called the Safe-House. The Safe-House is badly needed since
there are many ongoing hacks and security concerns in the DeFi space right now.
The Safe-House is a piece of engineering sophistication that utilizes existing
blockchain principles to bring about greater security when customer assets are
moved around. The Safe-House logic is easily implemented as smart contracts on
any decentralized system. The amount of funds at risk from both internal and
external parties -- and hence the maximum one time loss -- is guaranteed to
stay within the specified limits based on cryptographic fundamentals.
To improve the safety of the Safe-House even further, we adapt the one time
password (OPT) concept to operate using blockchain technology. Well suited to
blockchain cryptographic nuances, our secondary advancement can be termed the
one time next time password (OTNTP) mechanism. The OTNTP is designed to
complement the Safe-House making it even more safe.
We provide a detailed threat assessment model -- discussing the risks faced
by DeFi protocols and the specific risks that apply to blockchain fund
management -- and give technical arguments regarding how these threats can be
overcome in a robust manner. We discuss how the Safe-House can participate with
other external yield generation protocols in a secure way. We provide reasons
for why the Safe-House increases safety without sacrificing the efficiency of
operation. We start with a high level intuitive description of the landscape,
the corresponding problems and our solutions. We then supplement this overview
with detailed discussions including the corresponding mathematical formulations
and pointers for technological implementation. This approach ensures that the
article is accessible to a broad audience