Related papers: Ransomware Payments in the Bitcoin Ecosystem
Bitcoin is a popular cryptocurrency that records alltransactions in a distributed append-only public ledger calledblockchain. The security of Bitcoin heavily relies on the incentive-compatible proof-of-work (PoW) based distributed consensus…
Ransomware, a type of malicious software that encrypts a victim's files and only releases the cryptographic key once a ransom is paid, has emerged as a potentially devastating class of cybercrimes in the past few years. In this paper, we…
Ransomware has been predominantly a threat to Windows systems. But, Linux systems became interesting for cybercriminals and this trend is expected to continue. This endangers IoT ecosystems, whereas many IoT systems are based on Linux (e.g.…
Bitcoin is by far the most popular crypto-currency solution enabling peer-to-peer payments. Despite some studies highlighting the network does not provide full anonymity, it is still being heavily used for a wide variety of dubious…
Hacks are one of the most damaging types of cryptocurrency related crime, accounting for billions of dollars in stolen funds since 2009. Professional investigators at Chainalysis have traced these stolen funds from the initial breach on an…
Ransomware is a growing threat to individuals and enterprises alike, constituting a major factor in cyber insurance and in the security planning of every organization. Although the game theoretic lens often frames the game as a competition…
Ransomware is a growing threat that typically operates by either encrypting a victim's files or locking a victim's computer until the victim pays a ransom. However, it is still challenging to detect such malware timely with existing…
Crypto Currencies have recently gained enormous popularity amongst the general public. With each passing day, more and more companies are radically accepting crypto cur-rencies in their payment systems, paving way for an economic…
Regulatory authorities aim to tackle illegal activities by targeting the economic incentives that drive such behaviour. This is typically achieved through the implementation of financial sanctions against the entities involved in the…
Ransomware attacks have caused billions of dollars in damages in recent years, and are expected to cause billions more in the future. Consequently, significant effort has been devoted to ransomware detection and mitigation. Behavioral-based…
Ransomware is a malicious class of software that utilises encryption to implement an attack on system availability. The target's data remains encrypted and is held captive by the attacker until a ransom demand is met. A common approach used…
This study empirically analyzes the transaction activity of Bitcoin addresses linked to Russian intelligence services, which have liquidated over 7 Bitcoin (BTC), i.e., equivalent to approximately US$300,000 based on the exchange rate at…
We present an approach to identifying which ransomware adversaries are most likely to target specific entities, thereby assisting these entities in formulating better protection strategies. Ransomware poses a formidable cybersecurity threat…
The Lightning Network, a payment channel network with a market cap of over 192M USD, is designed to resolve Bitcoin's scalability issues through fast off-chain transactions. There are multiple Lightning Network client implementations, all…
Ransomware has grown to become one of the most damaging types of cybercrime, affecting private and public organizations in any sector. While early types of ransomware targeted many victims via automated attacks, ransomware groups have…
The bitcoin peer-to-peer network has drawn significant attention from researchers, but so far has mostly focused on publicly visible portions of the network, i.e., publicly reachable peers. This mostly ignores the hidden parts of the…
Ransomware is a type of malware which encrypts user data and extorts payments in return for the decryption keys. This cyberthreat is one of the most serious challenges facing organizations today and has already caused immense financial…
Ransomware is currently the key threat for individual as well as corporate Internet users. Especially dangerous is crypto ransomware that encrypts important user data and it is only possible to recover it once a ransom has been paid.…
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…
Blockchain provides the unique and accountable channel for financial forensics by mining its open and immutable transaction data. A recent surge has been witnessed by training machine learning models with cryptocurrency transaction data for…