Vastaamo hacker traced via ‘untraceable’ Monero transactions, police says (www.bleepingcomputer.com)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by BrikoX@lemmy.zip to c/monero@monero.town

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[-] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 17 points 9 months ago

Disinformation alert. This person was dumb enough to have Bitcoin trade it for Monero and then trade it back to Bitcoin and send it to a centralized exchange. Monero itself was not traced. The amounts into and out of Bitcoin were traced, and then the person was dumb enough to send it to a centralized exchange to cash out. Stupid fuck.

[-] nabio@monero.town 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

dumb Stupid fuck.

Perhaps, you never know. it's a little hard to believe that someone with technical skills would fail like that. is it also possible this event was done like that so they could falsely claim Monero was traced? yes.

Later in the future I expect several fabricated events to make Monero look real bad in headlines, not just "traced"

[-] clever_banana@lemmy.today 2 points 9 months ago

What would you recommend? Just wait a few days between each tx?

[-] XmrLovingAncap@monero.town 4 points 9 months ago

Wait for ~4h, churn (send to your own wallet), repeat this a few times and then start to cash out (not everything at once)

[-] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 3 points 9 months ago

First, dont demand bitcoin, second dont attempt to "cash out". I have my opinion on just how I would do this, but will not say.

[-] tusker@monero.town 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Number one is do not use BTC or any other coin with a public ledger, this is not money.

The best thing to do is just use your Monero as money, buy things you need or want and pay people for services with it. You can also donate it to a good cause.

[-] clever_banana@lemmy.today 1 points 9 months ago

Only 1/3 of the orgs that I dontate-to accept bitcoin. None of them accept monero.

[-] MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

Exactly. Not using Bitcoin is avoiding the problem instead of trying to find a solution

[-] admin@monero.town 1 points 9 months ago

Monero is the solution to this specific problem though? Acceptance is a different problem and can be solved by asking the org to accept Monero.

[-] MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

Could you explain how the man got caught? I still don't understand how using bitcoin compromised him

[-] admin@monero.town 1 points 9 months ago

Imagine extorting $50k from someone, you can see the bitcoin move from the extortionists wallet to a non-kyc instant exchanger and 30 minutes later a non-kyc instant exchanger sends $50k minus transaction fees to a Binance account. Doesn't exactly require breaking encryption that's been around for years to make the connection.

Doesn't really matter though. If he had held onto the Monero, he would have still gotten caught because he accidentally uploaded his /home directory with personal info and published it with his extortion-account when trying to upload stolen data.

[-] MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

That's just plain stupid. Of course it's easy to track the money if he sends all of it across. But what if he had created multiple monero and bitcoin accounts, used P2P for both and had transacted with random amount of coins from each currency? It would have been harder but are there any faults in the privacy of either coin that would still have led to the authorities catching him? Not advocating for crime, of course, but privacy is a concern for all of us.

Lol at uploading the entire folder.

[-] admin@monero.town 1 points 9 months ago

Just to make things clear, the Bitcoin ledger is entirely transparent so not actually anonymous. While it's technically possible to not get caught with bitcoin, it requires a ton of extra effort and if you mess up only once, you might retroactively link everything back together. In Monero there are some known attacks that could reduce your privacy but if you are aware of those they can be easily avoided. There's actually a whole youtube show on those.

[-] MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

What if you include multiple accounts on either side and also churn across multiple accounts?

[-] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 1 points 9 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

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[-] noride@lemm.ee 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

It sounds like they went BTC -> Monero -> BTC. It's not outlined explicitly in the article, but I am guessing it's the on/off ramping that got him popped.

[-] stealths@monero.town 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Lol, hard to believe that they really think this kind of misleading news can scare "big" hackers.

[-] clever_banana@lemmy.today 5 points 9 months ago

Kivimäki has not pleaded guilty yet

Kinda fucked up they say "yet" and lead the reader to believe they're guilty

[-] MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

Could someone explain to me how he got caught?

[-] BrikoX@lemmy.zip 1 points 9 months ago

Apparently, by being stupid. See https://lemmy.zip/comment/6851063

[-] MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

In essence, he got caught because he traded a certain amount of bitcoin for Monero and then traded a similar amount back? Wouldn't converting to Monero stop the trail right there? Would converting from Monero to Bitcoin in smaller quantities have helped him evade the authorities? How did using bitcoin let them track him?

What would people do if they want to pay in crypto but the service only accepts bitcoin?

[-] Hestia@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Finnish investigators from the National Bureau of Investigation (KRP), with the help of Binance, followed the trail of payments to Kivimäki, who exchanged the funds for Monero and then exchanged them back to Bitcoin.

What probably happened is that he extorted Bitcoin from a known entity, then he went to Binance and traded that Bitcoin for Monero, then sent a similar amount of XMR to Binance to exchange again for BTC thinking he was covering his tracks.

[-] MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

Essentially what I said. If one were to exchange a similar amount amongst cryptocurrenies from brokers like Binance (who definitely run analytics on transactions), even XMR won't be able to save them. With that said, I'd like a more comprehensive explanation, however my posts regarding such experiments have largely been ignored on the Monero forum on Lemmy. Would you know whom I could approach?

[-] dragonsidedd@sciencemastodon.com 1 points 9 months ago

@Hestia @MigratingtoLemmy No crypto is a good tool for the problems involved in money laundering.

Once you connect back to the public system of commercial payments, you have to explain where the funds came from. And nobody’s dumb enough to buy NFTs anymore.

[-] xmr_unlimited@monero.town 3 points 9 months ago

Meanwhile cryptocurrencies are still being created daily essentially printing money and this is ok with everyone. Monero just gives us a safe tool to use on the hostile internet and we are all criminals because we see the implications of a transparent ledger long term. I can't even make money on stocks trying to diversify from monero...everything is manipulated...but everyone is fine with this. House prices are a criminal rip off...everyone fine with this...some anxiety ridden runt trades some monero and holy shit...off with all their heads. But everything's fine...

[-] UncleIroh@merovingian.club 2 points 9 months ago

@xmr_unlimited @BrikoX

Trad-Fi is a feeding trough right now.

Honestly, it's not that normies disagree with Monero's goals, it''s just still way too complicated for most normies to bootstrap into getting, let alone using. And I've tried showing people.

In the end local people resort to anything that is useful as a currency - fish, meat, eggs, veggies, skill--swaps - I'm down for that too.

[-] nabio@monero.town 3 points 9 months ago

KRP did not disclose the exact mechanism for tracing the Monero transactions, citing the need to protect sensitive investigative techniques that can prove invaluable in future cases.

of course... looks like more of the usual, nothing.