Related papers: Identifying Ransomware Actors in the Bitcoin Netwo…
Bitcoin is a popular alternative to fiat money, widely used for its perceived anonymity properties. However, recent attacks on Bitcoin's peer-to-peer (P2P) network demonstrated that its gossip-based flooding protocols, which are used to…
Benford's law describes the distribution of the first digit of numbers appearing in a wide variety of numerical data, including tax records, and election outcomes, and has been used to raise "red flags" about potential anomalies in the data…
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…
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…
Ransomware is considered as a significant threat for most enterprises since the past few years. In scenarios wherein users can access all files on a shared server, one infected host can lock the access to all shared files. We propose a tool…
Ransomware uses encryption methods to make data inaccessible to legitimate users. To date a wide range of ransomware families have been developed and deployed, causing immense damage to governments, corporations, and private users. As these…
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…
With the rapid increase of threats on the Internet, people are continuously seeking privacy and anonymity. Services such as Bitcoin and Tor were introduced to provide anonymity for online transactions and Web browsing. Due to its…
Ethereum is currently the second largest blockchain by market capitalization and a popular platform for cryptocurrencies. As it has grown, the high value present and the anonymity afforded by the technology have led Ethereum to become a…
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) serve as a representative form of digital asset ownership and have attracted numerous investors, creators, and tech enthusiasts in recent years. However, related fraud activities, especially phishing scams, have…
The popularity and amazing attractiveness of cryptocurrencies, and especially Bitcoin, absorb countless enthusiasts daily. Although Blockchain technology prevents fraudulent behavior, it cannot detect fraud on its own. There are always…
Ransomware attacks are among the most severe cyber threats. They have made headlines in recent years by threatening the operation of governments, critical infrastructure, and corporations. Collecting and analyzing ransomware data is an…
Botnets represent a global problem and are responsible for causing large financial and operational damage to their victims. They are implemented with evasion in mind, and aim at hiding their architecture and authors, making them difficult…
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…
Different types of malicious activities have been flagged in multiple permissionless blockchains such as bitcoin, Ethereum etc. While some malicious activities exploit vulnerabilities in the infrastructure of the blockchain, some target its…
Malware writers frequently try to hide the activities of their agents within tunnelled traffic. Within the Kill Chain model the infection time is often measured in seconds, and if the infection is not detected and blocked, the malware…
This research investigated how online criminal activities can be better understood and connected using data-driven machine learning methods. Many illegal activities, such as human trafficking and illicit trade, have moved to online…
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…
In a ring-signature-based anonymous cryptocurrency, signers of a transaction are hidden among a set of potential signers, called a ring, whose size is much smaller than the number of all users. The ring-membership relations specified by the…
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…