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So the bad guys used a public ledger (Bitcoin) to get paid? Why aren't the hackers asking for cryptocurrencies using zero-knowledge proofs like ZCash or Monero

So the bad guys used a public ledger (Bitcoin) to get paid? Why aren't the hackers asking for cryptocurrencies using zero-knowledge proofs like ZCash or Monero? Bitcoin? What's their plan next? I'm not saying you can't get away with this (there are coin "mixers" and decentralized exchanges) but still, this leaves lots of traces left and right. For example we saw a lot of people getting busted recently while they thought they were smart using cryptocurrencies, including a money launderer ring... And they were using mixers, decentralized exchanges, people located overal several countries/continents and whatnots if I recall correctly. Yet: all busted. For all we known in six months the headline could be: "Hackers who extorted 1.14M USD from UCSF arrested by Interpol" Besides that: what happened to offline backups? How exactly are hackers coming for cloned, unplugged, HDDs/SSDs stored on shelves / bank safes? (I know several companies doing just that as offline backups) I hope this serves as a wake up call to companies/institutions either not doing backup properly or outsourcing to incompetent companies not doing backups properly (the latter being not really excusable).

SirYandi 6y ago
I've wondered about this as well. What's stopping such criminals from purchasing Monero with the Bitcoin. Would that be enough to anonymize?
- Zenbit_UX 6y ago
  Indeed, I imagine a service that accepts bitcoin and provides you monero would instantly anonymize you. To outside observers it would look like you sent the BTC to an exchange and they'd continue following them to innocent wallets while you've hopped off the network entirely.
xur17 6y ago
> So the bad guys used a public ledger (Bitcoin) to get paid? Why aren't the hackers asking for cryptocurrencies using zero-knowledge proofs like ZCash or Monero? Bitcoin? What's their plan next? I imagine they chose Bitcoin because it's the most liquid - they can just tell their victims to go to Coinbase or any cryptocurrency exchange to acquire it. If they ask for Zcash, the options are a lot more slim.
thewebcount 6y ago
> Besides that: what happened to offline backups? How exactly are hackers coming for cloned, unplugged, HDDs/SSDs stored on shelves / bank safes? (I know several companies doing just that as offline backups) I've heard, though I have no way to verify this, that some ransomware gets installed and just writes copies of itself for a while before really activating. The copies get backed up, and if you restore from backup you restore them and they get activated.

SirYandi 6y ago

I've wondered about this as well. What's stopping such criminals from purchasing Monero with the Bitcoin. Would that be enough to anonymize?

Zenbit_UX 6y ago
Indeed, I imagine a service that accepts bitcoin and provides you monero would instantly anonymize you. To outside observers it would look like you sent the BTC to an exchange and they'd continue following them to innocent wallets while you've hopped off the network entirely.

xur17 6y ago

> So the bad guys used a public ledger (Bitcoin) to get paid? Why aren't the hackers asking for cryptocurrencies using zero-knowledge proofs like ZCash or Monero? Bitcoin? What's their plan next? I imagine they chose Bitcoin because it's the most liquid - they can just tell their victims to go to Coinbase or any cryptocurrency exchange to acquire it. If they ask for Zcash, the options are a lot more slim.

thewebcount 6y ago

> Besides that: what happened to offline backups? How exactly are hackers coming for cloned, unplugged, HDDs/SSDs stored on shelves / bank safes? (I know several companies doing just that as offline backups) I've heard, though I have no way to verify this, that some ransomware gets installed and just writes copies of itself for a while before really activating. The copies get backed up, and if you restore from backup you restore them and they get activated.