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Full-Text Articles in Forensic Science and Technology

Book Review: Tracers In The Dark: The Global Hunt For The Crime Lords Of Cryptocurrency, Marion Jones Feb 2024

Book Review: Tracers In The Dark: The Global Hunt For The Crime Lords Of Cryptocurrency, Marion Jones

International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence & Cybercrime

Doubleday released Andy Greenberg’s Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency in November 2022. Through vivid case studies of global criminal investigations, the book dispels myths about the anonymizing power of cryptocurrency. The book details how the ability to identify cryptocurrency users and payment methods successfully brought down several large criminal empires, while also highlighting the continuous cat-and-mouse game between law enforcement officials and criminal actors using cryptocurrency. The book is an excellent resource for law enforcement officials, academics, and general cybersecurity practitioners interested in cryptocurrency-related criminal activities and law enforcement techniques.


Dynamics Of Dark Web Financial Marketplaces: An Exploratory Study Of Underground Fraud And Scam Business, Bo Ra Jung, Kyung-Shick Choi, Claire Seungeun Lee Aug 2022

Dynamics Of Dark Web Financial Marketplaces: An Exploratory Study Of Underground Fraud And Scam Business, Bo Ra Jung, Kyung-Shick Choi, Claire Seungeun Lee

International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence & Cybercrime

The number of Dark Web financial marketplaces where Dark Web users and sellers actively trade illegal goods and services anonymously has been growing exponentially in recent years. The Dark Web has expanded illegal activities via selling various illicit products, from hacked credit cards to stolen crypto accounts. This study aims to delineate the characteristics of the Dark Web financial market and its scams. Data were derived from leading Dark Web financial websites, including Hidden Wiki, Onion List, and Dark Web Wiki, using Dark Web search engines. The study combines statistical analysis with thematic analysis of Dark Web content. Offering promotions …


Memory Foreshadow: Memory Forensics Of Hardware Cryptocurrency Wallets – A Tool And Visualization Framework, Tyler Thomas, Mathew Piscitelli, Ilya Shavrov, Ibrahim Baggili Sep 2020

Memory Foreshadow: Memory Forensics Of Hardware Cryptocurrency Wallets – A Tool And Visualization Framework, Tyler Thomas, Mathew Piscitelli, Ilya Shavrov, Ibrahim Baggili

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

We present Memory FORESHADOW: Memory FOREnSics of HArDware cryptOcurrency Wallets. To the best of our knowledge, this is the primary account of cryptocurrency hardware wallet client memory forensics. Our exploratory analysis revealed forensically relevant data in memory including transaction history, extended public keys, passphrases, and unique device identifiers. Data extracted with FORESHADOW can be used to associate a hardware wallet with a computer and allow an observer to deanonymize all past and future transactions due to hierarchical deterministic wallet address derivation. Additionally, our novel visualization framework enabled us to measure both the persistence and integrity of artifacts produced by the …


Frameup: An Incriminatory Attack On Storj: A Peer To Peer Blockchain Enabled Distributed Storage System, Xiaolu Zhang, Justin Grannis, Ibrahim Baggili, Nicole Lang Beebe Mar 2019

Frameup: An Incriminatory Attack On Storj: A Peer To Peer Blockchain Enabled Distributed Storage System, Xiaolu Zhang, Justin Grannis, Ibrahim Baggili, Nicole Lang Beebe

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

In this work we present a primary account of frameup, an incriminatory attack made possible because of existing implementations in distributed peer to peer storage. The frameup attack shows that an adversary has the ability to store unencrypted data on the hard drives of people renting out their hard drive space. This is important to forensic examiners as it opens the door for possibly framing an innocent victim. Our work employs Storj as an example technology, due to its popularity and market size. Storj is a blockchain enabled system that allows people to rent out their hard drive space …


Inception: Virtual Space In Memory Space In Real Space, Peter Casey, Rebecca Lindsay-Decusati, Ibrahim Baggili, Frank Breitinger Jan 2019

Inception: Virtual Space In Memory Space In Real Space, Peter Casey, Rebecca Lindsay-Decusati, Ibrahim Baggili, Frank Breitinger

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

Virtual Reality (VR) has become a reality. With the technology's increased use cases, comes its misuse. Malware affecting the Virtual Environment (VE) may prevent an investigator from ascertaining virtual information from a physical scene, or from traditional “dead” analysis. Following the trend of antiforensics, evidence of an attack may only be found in memory, along with many other volatile data points. Our work provides the primary account for the memory forensics of Immersive VR systems, and in specific the HTC Vive. Our approach is capable of reconstituting artifacts from memory that are relevant to the VE, and is also capable …


Revolution In Crime: How Cryptocurrencies Have Changed The Criminal Landscape, Igor Groysman Dec 2018

Revolution In Crime: How Cryptocurrencies Have Changed The Criminal Landscape, Igor Groysman

Student Theses

This thesis will examine the ways in which various cryptocurrencies have impacted certain traditional crimes. While crime is always evolving with technology, cryptocurrencies are a game changer in that they provide anonymous and decentralized payment systems which, while they can be tracked in a reactive sense via the blockchain, are seen by criminals as having better uses for them than traditional fiat currencies, such as the ability to send money relatively fast to another party without going through an intermediary, or the ability to obscure the origin of the money for money laundering purposes. Every week there are new cryptocurrencies …


If I Had A Million Cryptos: Cryptowallet Application Analysis And A Trojan Proof-Of-Concept, Trevor Haigh, Frank Breitinger, Ibrahim Baggili Jan 2018

If I Had A Million Cryptos: Cryptowallet Application Analysis And A Trojan Proof-Of-Concept, Trevor Haigh, Frank Breitinger, Ibrahim Baggili

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

Cryptocurrencies have gained wide adoption by enthusiasts and investors. In this work, we examine seven different Android cryptowallet applications for forensic artifacts, but we also assess their security against tampering and reverse engineering. Some of the biggest benefits of cryptocurrency is its security and relative anonymity. For this reason it is vital that wallet applications share the same properties. Our work, however, indicates that this is not the case. Five of the seven applications we tested do not implement basic security measures against reverse engineering. Three of the applications stored sensitive information, like wallet private keys, insecurely and one was …