Yuzuki

Law enforcement in Japan arrested 18 people who were involved in laundering money with XMR. Japanese LE allegedly were able to trace the transactions. Does anyone know more about what happened?

Article below:

Japanese authorities have arrested 18 individuals involved in a Monero (XMR) money laundering operation, calling the privacy and transaction obfuscation features of its blockchain into question.

The arrests, facilitated by cross-border cooperation between nine regional police forces and Japan’s Cybercrime Special Investigation Unit on August 21, identified multiple individuals as part of an organized group that allegedly laundered proceeds through Monero.

Led by Yuta Kobayashi, the group is accused of conducting around 900 fraudulent transactions between June 2021 and January 2022, amassing approximately 100 million yen ($670,000). Using stolen credit card information, the group allegedly made fake purchases on the popular Japanese platform Mercari. The funds were then laundered through Monero, a privacy-focused cryptocurrency known for its difficult-to-trace nature.

Investigation Suggests Unprecedented Success in Tracing Monero Transactions Monero is one of the most popular privacy protocols in the crypto industry. Its native token, XMR, is fully fungible and used for online purchases with high privacy.

Moreover, XMR is also used for p2p payments, donations, and protection against financial surveillance.

Despite its strong privacy features, which include concealing transaction details and wallet balances through ring signatures and stealth addresses, authorities were able to track the flow of funds.

The investigation, conducted by Japan’s newly established Cyber Special Investigation Unit in collaboration with nine prefectural police departments, began in August. Kobayashi’s involvement was uncovered through communication on encrypted apps, often used by the group to coordinate their activities.

Japanese law enforcement’s apparent ability to track criminals using Monero in their recent investigation aligns with growing concerns over the privacy of XMR transactions. Recent video purportedly leaked from blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis suggests the firm has developed methods to trace transactions on the Monero blockchain, despite its reputation as a privacy-focused cryptocurrency.

Monero has long been touted for its anonymity and untraceable transactions, but the allegedly leaked video indicates that Chainalysis may be able to track the protocol’s transactions by leveraging their own “malicious” nodes, raising significant questions concerning the level of identity obfuscation privacy protocols are capable of delivering,

If law enforcement agencies could breach the protocol’s privacy features, a subsequent shift in how criminal groups attempt to obscure their operations could potentially see a shift toward alternative mixing services.

Based on some discussions in the #monero Matrix room, a reddit user shared a list of potentially malicious monero node IPs: http://redlib.nowherejezfoltodf4jiyl6r56jnzintap5vyjlia7fkirfsnfizflqd.onion/r/Monero/comments/1g82047/malicious_node_ips_discovered/

The pasted list of IPs and ranges: http://redlib.nowherejezfoltodf4jiyl6r56jnzintap5vyjlia7fkirfsnfizflqd.onion/r/Monero/comments/1g82047/malicious_node_ips_discovered/

rblaine95 also put together a list on his Github page: http://redlib.nowherejezfoltodf4jiyl6r56jnzintap5vyjlia7fkirfsnfizflqd.onion/r/Monero/comments/1g82047/malicious_node_ips_discovered/

Based on everything that has been happening in the Monero world, the safest thing to do right now is to host your own node instead of relying on public nodes. Public nodes remain one of the biggest pain points for Monero and some attacks are still viable, such as poisoned output attacks. More on the different types of attacks is available on the Monero Community Workgroup YouTube channel, which released the Breaking Monero series: http://redlib.nowherejezfoltodf4jiyl6r56jnzintap5vyjlia7fkirfsnfizflqd.onion/r/Monero/comments/1g82047/malicious_node_ips_discovered/

#monero #xmr

Today, 24 August 2024, Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of Telegram, was arrested at Paris Le Bourget airport. The arrest took place as Durov was getting off his private jet, following a search warrant. The operation was conducted by the French secret services, according to unofficial sources, but this information remains to be confirmed.

I find it totally insane just how many people, including criminals, drug dealers, and the people from our favorite glowie honey pot forum, are still using Telegram. Telegram provides no fundamental security or privacy, unlike many other tools out there like XMPP via OTR.

The only reason so many of them use it is because they turn a blind eye to whatever happens on the platform. Similar to how kik was used by chomos to share cp. Technically against the ToS, but nobody gave a fuck to moderate anything. Both are similar enough to other social media apps and instant messengers, so any retard with a phone can install and use it, which itself is retarded.

France is fucked and the feds are going to be all over this one and who knows how much data they are going to extract. No idea if deleting your messages and account will do any good, but I sure as hell would do it.

Also look at some other tools, like Session, XMPP over OTR or SimpleX. Really, there are too many messengers out there that fulfill the same purpose. Use Tor, learn how to spin up VMs, and practice some decent opsec.

If you still want to use Telegram, at the very least use an SMS verification service or get an anonymous sim and pay in monero. Don't hand out your real fucking phone number like a retard and don't tie your identity to it, if you are sailing the high seas.

You can find SMS verification services on monerica.com and on KYCnot.me (Tor Link).

Link to dread post: http://dreadytofatroptsdj6io7l3xptbet6onoyno2yv7jicoxknyazubrad.onion/post/d6a56794e6cd83ef8334

#telegram #arrest #xmpp #monero

NIST has formally published three post-quantum cryptography standards from the competition it held to develop cryptography able to withstand the anticipated quantum computing decryption of current asymmetric encryption.

There are no surprises – but now it is official. The three standards are ML-KEM (formerly better known as Kyber), ML-DSA (formerly better known as Dilithium), and SLH-DSA (better known as Sphincs+). A fourth, FN-DSA (known as Falcon) has been chosen for future standardization.

IBM, along with industry and academic partners, was involved in developing the first two. The third was co-developed by a researcher who has since joined IBM. IBM also worked with NIST in 2015/2016 to help establish the framework for the PQC competition that officially kicked off in December 2016.

With such deep involvement in both the competition and winning algorithms, SecurityWeek talked to Michael Osborne, CTO of IBM Quantum Safe, for a better understanding of the need for and principles of quantum safe cryptography.

It has been understood since 1996 that a quantum computer would be able to decipher today’s RSA and elliptic curve algorithms using (Peter) Shor’s algorithm. But this was theoretical knowledge since the development of sufficiently powerful quantum computers was also theoretical. Shor’s algorithm could not be scientifically proven since there were no quantum computers to prove or disprove it. While security theories need to be monitored, only facts need to be handled.

“It was only when quantum machinery started to look more realistic and not just theoretic, around 2015-ish, that people such as the NSA in the US began to get a little concerned,” said Osborne. He explained that cybersecurity is fundamentally about risk. Although risk can be modeled in different ways, it is essentially about the probability and impact of a threat. In 2015, the probability of quantum decryption was still low but rising, while the potential impact had already risen so dramatically that the NSA began to be seriously concerned.

It was the increasing risk level combined with knowledge of how long it takes to develop and migrate cryptography in the business environment that created a sense of urgency and led to the new NIST competition. NIST already had some experience in the similar open competition that resulted in the Rijndael algorithm – a Belgian design submitted by Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen – becoming the AES symmetric cryptographic standard. Quantum-proof asymmetric algorithms would be more complex.

According to the Andy Yen, CEO of Proton, Proton does not support Monero in any way and will probably never offer a Monero payment nor a Monero wallet. They don’t want to be associated with criminals, they’re afraid of the government putting a target on their back, like with Tornado Cash or Samourai Wallet, and there are auditing requirements in Switzerland that prevent them from accepting Monero.

There is really no good reason to use Proton at this point. They are trying to become the crappier alternative to Google and Microsoft with the goal of providing “privacy”, yet they fork over data on demand and go the opposite direction of the privacy community.

If you want email, self-host with Modoboa, Maddy, Mail-in-a-Box, iRedMail, or any of the other open-source mail servers.

If you want productivity tools, use LibreOffice. If you want it on a server, spin up a linux server and install Nextcloud with Nextcloud Office.

If you need a monero wallet, use the monero wallet cli, monero gui, feather wallet, or cake wallet.

If you want to save passwords, use KeePassXC and store them on an encrypted container.

If you want to exchange coins, there is a table of options on dread: http://dreadytofatroptsdj6io7l3xptbet6onoyno2yv7jicoxknyazubrad.onion/post/9102fba1f90b5df1e0f5

With all that said, fuck Proton!

Podcast: http://optoutkoplzfgs7wl3gkg5nmtrrs7ki6ljcguf7c4w7rdsrtozlghxad.onion/episodes/protonwallet-andy-yen/

cross-posted from: https://monero.town/post/3694811

Hey guys,

We're Monero advocates and built libereco.xyz for the community and anyone interested in Monero. Libereco is an Esperanto word meaning Freedom or Liberty.

Libereco Resources is a Monero knowledge and resources aggregator. You can find resources such as how Monero works, the history and origin of Monero, available wallets, how to mine, buy or spend Monero, as well as all kinds of technical and educational resources, videos, media literature. You can also suggest resources that we are missing but should be included.

On top of that we also have a Monero Dashboard with news and community feeds, price chart, tickers, and network stats. The Dashboard is something we're looking to improve in the future with different charts and more stats. We also hope to offer our own blockchain explorer in the future.

And lastly we also have a Blogo (esperanto for Blog) with articles written by several different authors related to Monero, privacy, sovereignty, agorism etc.

Please check it out, share it, and let us know your feedback, thanks.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/22001613

Unless you enjoy holding paper monero, and letting centralized exchanges get away with fractional reserves, always withdraw your crypto!

cross-posted from: https://monero.town/post/3449259

gotta convince the normie friends to use Monero somehow, showing evidence of the corruption is a start

On 7th May 2024, LocalMonero and it's sister site, AgoraDesk, announced they would be "winding down" their operations. After almost 7 years of operation the P2P cryptocurrency exchange platforms have decided to shutdown due to "a combination of internal and external factors".