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Analysis of crypto-currency digital wallets

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(@blenks)
Posts: 1
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Hi everyone, I am a newbie and currently a research student trying to get a paper published so looking for constructive criticism on a paper I have been working on. So any feedback on whether the paper is any good, missing sections, order of the paper or any general feedback would be welcome – abstract below many thanks email comments stephen.blenkin@btinternet.com

Is cash still king? With card payments now overtaking cash for the first time ever as reported in media 2017 (morningadvertiser, Accessed 2019). Coupled with the rise of 1000’s of cryptocurrencies does this mean that cash now takes a back seat? Electronic transference of currency from one bank account to another anywhere in the world is not new, and with the strict guidelines that the banking institutions adhere to these transactions can be tracked from source to destination. However, some national banks; and indeed some of the Governments that regulate them are not trustworthy. Chaum (1982) proposed ‘blind’ cryptography which protects payees’ anonymity from invasion. The founder of Mt Gox said to be the world largest Bitcoin exchange at the time; was charged and later convicted of instigating a drug auction site called ‘Silk Road’, selling illicit drugs on-line for payment to be made in Bitcoin only (Scannell, 2015). Criminals commit their crimes for profit therefore the digital currency is a perfect place for criminals to hide their financial affairs. Payments being made as a result of money laundering, blackmail, extortion or tax evasion, can be moved seamlessly to anywhere in the world with few or no records tying an individual to ‘monies’. A digital wallet is used as an interface to your cryptocurrency, where you store and commit transactions. Creating a digital wallet can be done anonymously and does not need ‘linking’ to any financial institutions. A digital wallet allows purchasing of goods and services anywhere in the world anonymously by using your digital wallets address. After downloading a digital wallets executable program, it needs be installed on the device being used. Part of this process entails producing a unique digital key or commonly known as a wallet’s address. Currently Microsoft Windows could be classed as the de facto operating system worldwide, with Windows 10 being the latest version. Most owners are all too familiar with installing and uninstalling programs. Once the application has been uninstalled can analysis still identify any digital artefacts left on the host computer?

Link is here https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1j2wspr6gfjhcjb/AAANYpGbDDX2yXxfJAYp8rXga?dl=0

 
Posted : 28/08/2019 11:53 am
AmNe5iA
(@amne5ia)
Posts: 173
Estimable Member
 

Nothing particularly interesting or groundbreaking. Finding artefacts showing that programs had previously been installed/used on the system isn't anything new. It would have been more interesting if you'd managed to find the private key relating to an address.

If you've got any spare bitcoins following your study feel free to send them to this address 1AmNe5iAYfYCGYFq7vpLWL4XRFxe21hh9D

Thanks

 
Posted : 28/08/2019 1:31 pm
(@dcs1094)
Posts: 146
Estimable Member
 

Looks like it relates more to installation and execution of programs, rather than cryptocurrency artefacts associated to different wallets. Have you looked more into the wallets and what exactly they store offline? Having done a tonne of investigations of wallets on computer and mobile platforms, I know there are artefacts present of note, otherwise I would not have bothered writing scripts to parse it out in the past.

Take Electrum for example, one of the most popular offline wallets, which you have looked a little into; when you launch the program and access a used wallet file, transactions, addresses, timestamps etc are present so they must be stored somewhere on disk, not least the private key, as Electrum is an offline wallet, which stores content in a single JSON file. Could you examine the JSON keys and determine where notable artefacts are stored. At some point the user may wish to sign a transaction, what happens to this private key when they do that on their computer? What artefacts may be present in RAM when this occurs, if the computer is connected to the internet? Just a few ideas to think about…

 
Posted : 28/08/2019 1:52 pm
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