Related papers: Ransomware Payments in the Bitcoin Ecosystem
Bitcoin is a digital currency and electronic payment system operating over a peer-to-peer network on the Internet. One of its most important properties is the high level of anonymity it provides for its users. The users are identified by…
Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will attempt to construct the one-to-many…
Ransomware impact different organizations for years, it causes huge monetary, reputation loss and operation impact. Other than typical data encryption by ransomware, attackers can request ransom from the victim organizations via data…
Bitcoin is one of the decentralized cryptocurrencies powered by a peer-to-peer blockchain network. Parties who trade in the bitcoin network are not required to disclose any personal information. Such property of anonymity, however,…
With the popularity of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), NFTs have become a new target of phishing attacks, posing a significant threat to the NFT trading ecosystem. There has been growing anecdotal evidence that new means of NFT phishing attacks…
Crypto-ransomware has caused an unprecedented scope of impact in recent years with an evolving level of sophistication. An extensive range of studies have been on defending against ransomware and reviewing the efficacy of various…
Among many prevailing malware, crypto-ransomware poses a significant threat as it financially extorts affected users by creating denial of access via unauthorized encryption of their documents as well as holding their documents hostage and…
Bitcoin is a "crypto currency", a decentralized electronic payment scheme based on cryptography. Bitcoin economy grows at an incredibly fast rate and is now worth some 10 billions of dollars. Bitcoin mining is an activity which consists of…
In the banking industry, ransomware is a well-known threat, but since the beginning of 2022, cryptojacking, an emerging threat is posing a considerable challenge to the banking industry. Ransomware has variants, and the attackers keep…
The dramatic adoption of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in the USA has revolutionized the financial landscape and provided unprecedented investment and transaction efficiency opportunities. The prime objective of this research project…
The rise of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, which enable transactions with a degree of pseudonymity, has led to a surge in various illicit activities, including ransomware payments and transactions on darknet markets. These illegal…
The dark web has emerged as the state-of-the-art solution for enhanced anonymity. Just like a double-edged sword, it also inadvertently becomes the safety net and breeding ground for illicit activities. Among them, cryptocurrencies have…
Traffic monetization is a crucial component of running most for-profit online businesses. One of its latest incarnations is cryptocurrency mining, where a website instructs the visitor's browser to participate in building a cryptocurrency…
Ransomware has been an ongoing issue since the early 1990s. In recent times ransomware has spread from traditional computational resources to cyber-physical systems and industrial controls. We devised a series of experiments in which…
One of the fundamental applications for a practically useful system of money is remuneration. Information pertaining to the amount of compensation awarded to different individuals is often considered sensitive, commanding a certain degree…
Bitcoin (BTC) is probably the most transparent payment network in the world, thanks to the full history of transactions available to the public. Though, Bitcoin is not a fully anonymous environment, rather a pseudonymous one, accounting for…
Mining pools, the main components of the Bitcoin network, dominate the computing resources and play essential roles in network security and performance aspects. Although many existing measurements of the Bitcoin network are available,…
The first six months of 2018 saw cryptocurrency thefts of $761 million, and the technology is also the latest and greatest tool for money laundering. This increase in crime has caused both researchers and law enforcement to look for ways to…
Ransomware has emerged as an infamous malware that has not escaped a lot of myths and inaccuracies from media hype. Victims are not sure whether or not to pay a ransom demand without fully understanding the lurking consequences. In this…
LockBit has evolved from an obscure Ransomware-as-a-Service newcomer in 2019 to the most prolific ransomware franchise of 2024. Leveraging a recently leaked MySQL dump of the gang's management panel, this study offers an end-to-end…