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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

#71

Post by throwawayou812 »

civilitty wrote: post #62
downandout wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only problem is there is no way to prove that that address actually belongs to the GRU. They don't have to. This case isn't going to trial; it was basically a PR stunt. It wouldn't survive a trial. The strategy is simple: Indict a bunch of people that you cannot extradite, and you get a PR win with just some broad strokes and have to prove nothing. You get to keep your unlimited budget to continue the investigati…

That's idiotic and completely ignorant of how large scale criminal prosecutions work. Conspiracy and RICO charges necessitate many low level indictments to demonstrate to the court that there is probable cause to the indict the bigger fish and restrict them until trial. Since indictments have a lower threshold than convictions, they are easily challenged when they are brought up as relevant evidence. Mueller has alre…

Conspiracy and RICO charges necessitate many low level indictments to demonstrate to the court that there is probable cause to the indict the bigger fish

If you cannot arrest the people in the "low level indictments" or threaten them with prison then they aren't going to help you with the "bigger fish".

Mueller has already brought these charges in front of a judge

You're entirely wrong. This went in front of a grand jury, not a judge. That shows that your understanding of this whole process may not be what it needs to be to make the arguments you are making. Anger in no way makes up for lack of knowledge.

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

#72

Post by civilitty »

downandout wrote: post #66
civilitty wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Well then, you should also know that these indictments were filed under oath by Mueller and his team, under the penalty of disbarment and literal criminal charges They didn't lie, they don't have to. Everything in this indictment may be what they believe happened. But these are broad strokes. It looks like any of these allegations would be difficult or impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt . Grand juries indi…

You're kidding, right? You can't possibly be this thick.

The first set of indictments against Russians involved in the social media manipulation campaign have lawyers actively representing them in US courts while they hide in Russia.

How the fuck is Mueller and his team going to lie when they know that their adversary is a nation-state with essentially unlimited resource, one that has already hired half a dozen American lawyers to slow down the process?

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

#73

Post by jcranmer »

colordrops wrote: post #24
jcranmer wrote: post #18

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.

What makes cash difficult to trace is the difficulty of establishing that transactions took place in the first place, let alone other potentially pertinent details.

The fact that Bitcoin has a public record of all transactions makes it far easier than cash to deanonymize addresses. Suppose you bought $2.56 worth of Bitcoin via credit card from a friendly Bitcoin seller that doesn't keep any record of this transaction. The government can go to VISA and ask "okay, who gave $2.56 to this vendor within this time frame." Now the government knows your credit card, and can then ask VISA to find all of the other transactions you did, and then look for bitcoin movement of the appropriate size to those transactions involving single-use addresses. All of those addresses are now tied together.

See, the untraceability is entirely dependent on how good your operational security is, and how well you know the capabilities of government financial tracking. And, when you consider that governments have been trying to tackle this problem for difficult-to-trace cash flow, bitcoin is at best no harder and at worst much easier.

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

#74

Post by throwawayou812 »

civilitty wrote: post #72
downandout wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well then, you should also know that these indictments were filed under oath by Mueller and his team, under the penalty of disbarment and literal criminal charges They didn't lie, they don't have to. Everything in this indictment may be what they believe happened. But these are broad strokes. It looks like any of these allegations would be difficult or impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt . Grand juries indi…

You're kidding, right? You can't possibly be this thick. The first set of indictments against Russians involved in the social media manipulation campaign have lawyers actively representing them in US courts while they hide in Russia. How the fuck is Mueller and his team going to lie when they know that their adversary is a nation-state with essentially unlimited resource, one that has already hired half a dozen Ameri…

How the fuck is Mueller and his team going to lie

The comment you are replying to specifically says that they didn't lie, and didn't have to. This and your other comments seem to imply that you have some sort of angry agenda here. I'm new to commenting here, but I've been lurking for a long time and your goals here seem to be in conflict with the spirit of HN. One person pointed out some facts that you seem to not like, and you basically screamed and didn't even read the comment you were replying to.

Personally, I don't like Trump. But you cannot deny that none of the people in this indictment face any risk of being arrested, which means the allegations in this specific indictment will never be challenged or proven.

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

#75

Post by civilitty »

throwawayou812 wrote: post #71
civilitty wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's idiotic and completely ignorant of how large scale criminal prosecutions work. Conspiracy and RICO charges necessitate many low level indictments to demonstrate to the court that there is probable cause to the indict the bigger fish and restrict them until trial. Since indictments have a lower threshold than convictions, they are easily challenged when they are brought up as relevant evidence. Mueller has alre…

Conspiracy and RICO charges necessitate many low level indictments to demonstrate to the court that there is probable cause to the indict the bigger fish If you cannot arrest the people in the "low level indictments" or threaten them with prison then they aren't going to help you with the "bigger fish". Mueller has already brought these charges in front of a judge You're entirely wrong. This went in front of a grand…

> That shows that your understanding of this whole process may not be what it needs to be to make the arguments you are making.

You don't even know that judges preside over grand jury proceedings. That's, like, the most fundamental aspect of the entire legal system: there is a judge deciding things.

You have no business criticizing someone's understanding of the judicial system.

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

#76

Post by 15155 »

nubela wrote: post #70
DSingularity wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? It seems to me that Z-Cash is much stronger than monero.

With ZCash, you have to trust the few men that did the "trusted setup". The point about privacy is to trust no one.

A related read that gets posted on HN every once in a while:

https://petertodd.org/2016/cypherpunk-desert-bus-zcash-trust...

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

#77

Post by reefoctopus »

craigc wrote: post #69
TangoTrotFox wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with these allegations is they always seem to have this sort of issue, as well as logical problems. Some of the things in the article don't really make any sense. For instance they state that they way they decided that Guccifer was part of the GRU is that on one occasion the IP for that Twitter account was from the GRU. They then state that that must mean that the Russians must have forgotten to log onto…

Two other points worth noting 1. The FBI never had physical access to the hacked servers and were relying completely on the report from a third party company, CrowdStrike: http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/313555-comey-fbi... 2. The former tech director of the NSA, William Binney, claimed that the data could not have been copied remotely because the download speed was around 22 MB/s (176 Mb/s) which he and…

>During former FBI director James Comey’s testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, Comey was asked whether the FBI had ever received the DNC’s hacked hardware.

>He said they did not, but obtained access from a review of the system performed by CrowdStrike, a third-party cybersecurity firm.

>"We got the forensics from the pros that they hired which -- again, best practice is always to get access to the machines themselves, but this, my folks tell me, was an appropriate substitute," Comey said.

>DNC spokeswoman Adrienne Watson told PolitiFact that the DNC cooperated with the FBI’s requests, which resulted in the DNC providing a copy of their server.

>"An image of a server is the best thing to use in an investigation so that your exploration of the server does not change the evidence (just like you don’t want investigators leaving their own DNA around a physical crime scene) and so that the bad actors cannot make changes to the evidence while you are looking at it," Watson said. "Any suggestion that they were denied access to what they wanted for their investigation is completely incorrect."

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/jul/...

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

#78

Post by throwawayou812 »

civilitty wrote: post #75
throwawayou812 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conspiracy and RICO charges necessitate many low level indictments to demonstrate to the court that there is probable cause to the indict the bigger fish If you cannot arrest the people in the "low level indictments" or threaten them with prison then they aren't going to help you with the "bigger fish". Mueller has already brought these charges in front of a judge You're entirely wrong. This went in front of a grand…

> That shows that your understanding of this whole process may not be what it needs to be to make the arguments you are making. You don't even know that judges preside over grand jury proceedings. That's, like, the most fundamental aspect of the entire legal system: there is a judge deciding things. You have no business criticizing someone's understanding of the judicial system.

Grand juries indict people, not judges.

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

#79

Post by throwaway5752 »

uxp wrote: post #60
throwaway5752 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I don't think there has been any public release of information confirming the evidence revealed in the indictment. Indictments are supposed to be somewhat hyperbolic in appearance (not literally, but figuratively). They aren't supposed to lie, but at the same time they will omit key facts explaining how or why they know or suspect person X did action Y. Those facts will be revealed to the defense or during trial. Unf…

Sure, I agree with you on all counts. My point was more that the poster I was replying to either has 1) something not in the indictment 2) some non-yet-public information, or 3) has made something up. I thought it might be 3, but wanted to extend the benefit of the doubt.

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

#80

Post by civilitty »

throwawayou812 wrote: post #78
civilitty wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That shows that your understanding of this whole process may not be what it needs to be to make the arguments you are making. You don't even know that judges preside over grand jury proceedings. That's, like, the most fundamental aspect of the entire legal system: there is a judge deciding things. You have no business criticizing someone's understanding of the judicial system.

Grand juries indict people, not judges.

Grand juries follow the instructions of the judge presiding over the proceedings.
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