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Since the creation of Bitcoin, transaction tracking is one of the prominent means for following the movement of Bitcoins involved in illegal activities. Although every Bitcoin transaction is recorded in the blockchain database, which is…
The number of blockchain users has tremendously grown in recent years. As an unintended consequence, e-crime transactions on blockchains has been on the rise. Consequently, public blockchains have become a hotbed of research for developing…
Money laundering is a global phenomenon with wide-reaching social and economic consequences. Cryptocurrencies are particularly susceptible due to the lack of control by authorities and their anonymity. Thus, it is important to develop new…
Every year, criminals launder billions of dollars acquired from serious felonies (e.g., terrorism, drug smuggling, or human trafficking) harming countless people and economies. Cryptocurrencies, in particular, have developed as a haven for…
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…
Over the past three years, especially following WannaCry malware, ransomware has become one of the biggest concerns for private businesses, state, and local government agencies. According to Homeland Security statistics, 1.5 million…
This paper provides an overview of how crypto currency and blockchain engineering interacts with the law enforcement. We point out that a large proportion of crypto users are amateur investors and the dominant and the largest segment in…
On February 2014, $650.000.000 worth of Bitcoins disappeared. Currently it is unclear whether hackers or MtGox, the largest Bitcoin exchange, are to be blamed. In either case, the anonymous and unregulated nature of the Bitcoin system makes…
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…
Utilizing graph analytics and learning has proven to be an effective method for exploring aspects of crypto economics such as network effects, decentralization, tokenomics, and fraud detection. However, the majority of existing research…
With the overall momentum of the blockchain industry, crypto-based crimes are becoming more and more prevalent. After committing a crime, the main goal of cybercriminals is to obfuscate the source of the illicit funds in order to convert…
Anti-money laundering (AML) regulations play a critical role in safeguarding financial systems, but bear high costs for institutions and drive financial exclusion for those on the socioeconomic and international margins. The advent of…
Cryptocurrencies are considered relevant assets and they are currently used as an investment or to carry out transactions. However, specific characteristics commonly associated with the cryptocurrencies such as irreversibility,…
The decentralization, redundancy, and pseudo-anonymity features have made permission-less public blockchain platforms attractive for adoption as technology platforms for cryptocurrencies. However, such adoption has enabled cybercriminals to…
Cryptocurrencies aim to replicate physical cash in the digital realm while removing centralized and trusted intermediaries. Decentralization is achieved by the blockchain, a permanent public ledger that contains a record of every…
Cryptocurrencies gain trust in users by publicly disclosing the full creation and transaction history. In return, the transaction history faithfully records the whole spectrum of cryptocurrency user behaviors. This article analyzes and…
This thesis presents techniques to investigate transactions in uncharted cryptocurrencies and services. Cryptocurrencies are used to securely send payments online. Payments via the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, use pseudonymous addresses…
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…
Blockchain systems and cryptocurrencies have exploded in popularity over the past decade, and with this growing user base, the number of cryptocurrency scams has also surged. Given the graphical structure of blockchain networks and the…
Bitcoin is the most popular cryptocurrency used worldwide. It provides pseudonymity to its users by establishing identity using public keys as transaction end-points. These transactions are recorded on an immutable public ledger called…