When the FBI succeeded in following the Bitcoin blockchain money trail and breaking the cryptocurrencies held by Colonial Pipeline hackers, it thought that cryptocurrency transactions would automatically protect them from scrutiny. It was a call for the awakening of cyber criminals.
One of Bitcoin’s core beliefs is that everyone has a public ledger that keeps all token transactions in history. That’s why more hackers are looking at coins such as dash, zcash, and monero that have additional anonymity built in.
In particular, Monero is an increasingly popular cryptocurrency for the world’s top ransomware criminals.
Rick Holland, Chief Information Security Officer, Digital Shadows, a cyber threat intelligence company, said:
Created in 2014
Monero was released in 2014 by a consortium of developers, many of whom chose to remain anonymous. As stated in the white paper, “privacy and anonymity” is the most important aspect of this digital currency.
The privacy token works on its own blockchain, hiding the details of virtually every transaction. The sender and recipient IDs, as well as the transaction amount itself, are spoofed.
These anonymous features allow monero to…
