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A Blockchain Analysis of the July 13th Mueller Indictment

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Re: A Blockchain Analysis of the July 13th Mueller Indictment

#21
post #4

A skeptic's counterpoint: https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/07/19/establishm...

That's not counterpoint, it's just typical right wing propaganda.

why is right full of 'typical' propaganda while left is honest ppl with verifiable facts. seems curious

Re: A Blockchain Analysis of the July 13th Mueller Indictment

#22
post #19

The only problem is there is no way to prove that that address actually belongs to the GRU. The transaction referenced in the indictment clearly happened, but Mueller and his team could have easily searched through the Bitcoin blockchain to find any transaction that paid for a VPN, hosting, or domain registration using Bitcoin on or around the date of the hack. The indictment makes it sound like the request for 0.026…

You might be interested in Micah F. Lee's take: https://theintercept.com/2018/07/18/mueller-indictment-russi...

Re: A Blockchain Analysis of the July 13th Mueller Indictment

#23

Details on count 10 are pretty damning. They managed to correlate their various sources of information pretty well. There's not much to say, they managed to tie a wallet address to a person/ip address and were able to trace a surprising amount of attempted money laundering that way.

Well, maybe something is damning, but if you believe that these "operatives" signed their e-mails with their full names including patronymics and ranks like "GRU captain" I have a cheap sunny beach in Greenland for sale. Or if you believe that the US spies had somehow full access to this info and are not afraid to compromise their sources by these revelations. Or, finally, if you believe that the US security agencies including Mueller himself

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mueller#Director_of_the...

are to be trusted on anything at all.

Re: A Blockchain Analysis of the July 13th Mueller Indictment

#24

I have to imagine that the first person at the FBI (or whichever agency is responsible for tracking money laundering) to come across bitcoin fell out of their chair laughing when they came across it. It's a protocol that has a public, dated, irrefutable log of every transaction made... and its users think it untraceable (or at least, they thought it untraceable back when it first came out).

it's about as untraceable as cash. If you pick some up anonymously, then use a different address for each transaction, all while obfuscating your connection using Tor or the like, your transactions should be difficult to trace.

Re: A Blockchain Analysis of the July 13th Mueller Indictment

#25
post #22
post #19

The only problem is there is no way to prove that that address actually belongs to the GRU. The transaction referenced in the indictment clearly happened, but Mueller and his team could have easily searched through the Bitcoin blockchain to find any transaction that paid for a VPN, hosting, or domain registration using Bitcoin on or around the date of the hack. The indictment makes it sound like the request for 0.026…

You might be interested in Micah F. Lee's take: https://theintercept.com/2018/07/18/mueller-indictment-russi...

TY, that is very interesting... also surprisingly lazy by the Russians.

I would have thought there would have been clear protocols about VPNs, some "we're 99.999% sure this is a clean laptop, don't do anything else here, and only do thing here and inside this brand new VM each day..." kinda stuff that would prevent such mistakes.

Re: A Blockchain Analysis of the July 13th Mueller Indictment

#26
>In short, we can be confident that the bitcoin address used in the alleged conspiracy was 1LQv8aKtQoiY5M5zkaG8RWL7LMwNzVaVqR.

I tried to verify this using blockchain explorer and couldn't find any matching addresses, is there a better way to do this? I'm pretty out of the loop at this point (last used it years ago)

Re: A Blockchain Analysis of the July 13th Mueller Indictment

#27

>In short, we can be confident that the bitcoin address used in the alleged conspiracy was 1LQv8aKtQoiY5M5zkaG8RWL7LMwNzVaVqR. I tried to verify this using blockchain explorer and couldn't find any matching addresses, is there a better way to do this? I'm pretty out of the loop at this point (last used it years ago)

https://www.blockchain.com/en/btc/address/1LQv8aKtQoiY5M5zka...

Re: A Blockchain Analysis of the July 13th Mueller Indictment

#28
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker news has a shadow banning problem. Unpopular opinions are downvoted into oblivion. Then your posts start going into the void.

I mean if your speech cannot survive in a free marketplace of ideas...

The other side in this situation is far into the barrel.

But it's mistaken to say HN is a free marketplace of ideas.

I could give some substantive points in support of this statement, but it's an old conversation and I've gotten in trouble for the ways I've expressed it in the past.

Re: A Blockchain Analysis of the July 13th Mueller Indictment

#29

Details on count 10 are pretty damning. They managed to correlate their various sources of information pretty well. There's not much to say, they managed to tie a wallet address to a person/ip address and were able to trace a surprising amount of attempted money laundering that way.

Well, maybe something is damning, but if you believe that these "operatives" signed their e-mails with their full names including patronymics and ranks like "GRU captain" I have a cheap sunny beach in Greenland for sale. Or if you believe that the US spies had somehow full access to this info and are not afraid to compromise their sources by these revelations. Or, finally, if you believe that the US security agencies…

What is your explanation of those ledger entries? Was Mueller setting up Russia before he was named Special Counsel?

Also, I read the indictment (https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2018/07/Mueller...) but I missed the part about, "these "operatives" signed their e-mails with their full names including patronymics and ranks like "GRU captain"". Please point me to it?

I assumed they used stolen identities, like it seems to state in count 10's paragraph 59 and 60, and uses multiple accounts across multiple exchanges to obscure the money trail (paragraph 63).

edit: It's common knowledge who Robert Mueller is. He's been a public figure for decades, and nobody ever made any effort conceal his background. Why are you providing me a wikipedia link?

Re: A Blockchain Analysis of the July 13th Mueller Indictment

#30

Great, now I know how to frame someone using Bitcoin. 1. Select a victim 2. Every time you are about to make a Bitcoin transaction, send an email to the victim's address requesting the amount you are about to send. (Bonus point if you can get directly into the spam folder.) 3. Send bitcoins as you intended to do. Now lay back and wait for your victim to be linked to your shady activities. (I'm writing this as a criti…

Next time you want to frame someone, send money simultaneously to them AND to the Bitcoin address cited in the article, and they'll be linked to a Russian conspiracy...
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