Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you trace mined coins?
Watch the markets and exchanges.
Presumably GRU was using its mined coins to spend on things like hosting for shady sites. The idea isn't to cash it out for rubles.
A Blockchain Analysis of the July 13th Mueller Indictment
61–70 of 128 posts
Re: A Blockchain Analysis of the July 13th Mueller Indictment
#62The 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…
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 already brought these charges in front of a judge and he decided that the evidence warrants serious consideration of the allegations. Until another judge says otherwise, you are doing nothing but spreading clearcut propaganda.
Re: A Blockchain Analysis of the July 13th Mueller Indictment
#63Re: A Blockchain Analysis of the July 13th Mueller Indictment
#64The 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…
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…
You don't know if that is true, you are just recycling unsubstantiated conspiracy theory propaganda.
Re: A Blockchain Analysis of the July 13th Mueller Indictment
#65I 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).
Monerro is the only currency that is very very hard to trace. Most other currencies are a joke.
Why? It seems to me that Z-Cash is much stronger than monero.
Re: A Blockchain Analysis of the July 13th Mueller Indictment
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know that Russia will never extradite them, and so does Mueller.
[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 indict based on probable cause, which an entirely different (and far lower) standard. They have probable cause if a credible witness, such as an FBI agent, simply tells them that they believe something happened.
Re: A Blockchain Analysis of the July 13th Mueller Indictment
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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…
I really don't see your descriptions as that odd or "problems." So some Russians didn't use Tor because you think they should have (it's not like the US government isn't already aware of TOR...). I just don't see that as a big deal or at all surprising...
Beyond that are you saying that some other actor hacked a GRU computer and framed them or something? That's a pretty big leap there without anything to it.
As for logs having your malware just delete logs automatically could be useful at times... less so other times. I would think you would want to choose to do it when you wanted. A lot of malware does log wiping, I'd be tempted to look for log changes over time just to find malware based on that alone..... suddenly missing logs would be a big sign.
Beyond that I'm not going to get into it. These seem like just you and me logicing things out in our head and that doesn't mean we're right or wrong. Humans don't make sense at times, they dork up, that isn't surprising to me.
Just because some of it is curious to me and maybe choices I wouldn't have made, doesn't make it not true, or those choices as odd or wrong as we might thing anyway.
Re: A Blockchain Analysis of the July 13th Mueller Indictment
#68Earlier 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…
You don't know if that is true, you are just recycling unsubstantiated conspiracy theory propaganda.
Dude's profile:
>HN used to be a place where thoughtful conversation could take place; now it's nothing more than a den of bullies attempting to spread misinformation that supports their political views. It's a hyper-liberal echo chamber.
>I am going continue posting because I hate bullies and won't allow them to tell me what to do, but each and every one of my comments now gets auto-downvoted by GDPR zealots. I don't expect that any comment of mine will ever have a positive score again, but that's OK. I have karma to burn.
>I win, you lose.
I guess this means you lost.
Re: A Blockchain Analysis of the July 13th Mueller Indictment
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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 a team concluded was not possible for a remote hack with servers in Russia and routing through a commercial VPN service:
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-r...
Re: A Blockchain Analysis of the July 13th Mueller Indictment
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Monerro is the only currency that is very very hard to trace. Most other currencies are a joke.
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.