There has been an ongoing war between criminals and authorities in cyberspace for years. Although cryptocurrencies are anonymous in nature, new techniques for tracking funds around the cryptocurrency blockchain have led to the arrest of dozens of cyber-criminals in the previous two years.
But recently a new website has surfaced on the darknet that allows criminals to assess how "clean" their digital currencies are.
Dr. Tom Robinson, chief scientist and founder at analysis provider Elliptic, who discovered the website explained, "We're seeing criminals start to fight back against blockchain analytics and this service is a first."
"It's called Antinalysis and criminals are now able to check their own Bitcoin wallets and see whether any association with criminal activity could be flagged by authorities."
According to Elliptic, the finding demonstrates how complex cybercrime networks are becoming and how concerned criminals are about being detected.
"It's a very valuable technique. If your funds are tainted, you can then do more laundering and try to remove that association with a criminal activity until you have clean coins," he said.
According to Dr. Robinson, this new trend is concerning that could make their work and law enforcement difficult. However, as per the researchers who examined it, the service isn't functioning very well right now.
"It actually wasn't very good at identifying links to criminal sites. However, it will inevitably improve over time. So I think this is going to be a significant capability for criminals and money launderers in the future."
Authorities all across the world, including China, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom, are attempting to address the rising problem of money laundering using cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrency monitoring has resulted in several high-profile arrests, such as US teenager Graham Ivan Clark, who is presently in prison for plotting one of the largest-ever social media hacks.
Last year, on July 15, Clark hacked into the accounts of dozens of celebrities, including Kim Kardashian, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Joe Biden, on Twitter.
"Everyone is asking me to give back," Mr. Gates stated in a tweet purportedly sent from his account. "You send $1,000, and I send you $2,000 back." After that, Clark and his hacking team tweeted an ad for a cryptocurrency fraud, which resulted in hundreds of transfers from people wanting to profit from the fraudulent giveaway.
Clark gained more than $100,000 (£72,000) in only a few hours and began the process of transferring the money around to cover his tracks. He is now 18 years old, pleaded guilty, and is currently serving a three-year sentence in a Florida jail.
The growing usage of so-called privacy coins is another trend that authorities are concerned about. Cryptocurrencies like Monero, for example, provide more secrecy than popular coins like Bitcoin.
Hackers are now urging victims to pay with these currencies in return for a discount in some extortion incidents. This is a trend that is yet to completely take off, and Kim Grauer, director of research at bitcoin monitoring firm Chainalysis, believes that this technique offers disadvantages for criminals.
"Privacy coins haven't been adopted to the extent that one may expect. The primary reason is they aren't as liquid as Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrency is only useful if you can buy and sell goods and services or cash out into mainstream money, and that is much more difficult with privacy coins."
