Deanonymizing Pseudonymity

(quoting links recently posted in <news:20250527.095215.9aa06e66@yamn.paranoici.org>) 
 
(using Tor Browser 14.5.2)
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.cose.2019.101684

Deanonymizing Tor hidden service users through Bitcoin transactions analysis  
Authors: Husam Al Jawaheri, Mashael Al Sabah, Yazan Boshmaf, Aiman Erbad Authors Info
& Claims
Volume 89, Issue C
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cose.2019.101684
Published: 01 February 2020 Publication History  
ACM Digital Library
Abstract
With the rapid increase of threats on the Internet, people are continuously seeking
privacy and anonymity. Services such as Bitcoin and Tor were introduced to provide 
anonymity for online transactions and Web browsing. Due to its pseudonymity model,
Bitcoin lacks retroactive operational security, which means historical pieces of
information could be used to identify a certain user. By exploiting publicly available
information, we show how relying on Bitcoin for payments on Tor hidden services could  
lead to deanonymization of these services� users. Such linking is possible by finding
at least one past transaction in the Blockchain that involves their publicly declared
Bitcoin addresses.
To demonstrate the consequences of this deanonymization approach, we carried out a  
real-world experiment simulating a passive, limited adversary. We crawled 1.5K hidden
services and collected 88 unique and active Bitcoin addresses. We then crawled 5B
tweets and 1M BitcoinTalk forum pages and collected 4.2K and 41K unique Bitcoin
addresses, respectively. Each user address was associated with an online identity along
with its public profile information. By analyzing the transactions in the Blockchain,
we were able to link 125 unique users to 20 hidden services, including sensitive ones, 
such as The Pirate Bay and Silk Road. We also analyzed two case studies in detail to
demonstrate the implications of the information leakage on users anonymity. In
particular, we confirm that Bitcoin addresses should be considered exploitable, as they
can be used to deanonymize users retroactively. This is especially important for Tor
hidden service users who actively seek and expect privacy and anonymity.
References  
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https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3589335.3651487 

Deanonymizing Transactions Originating from Monero Tor Hidden Service Nodes
Authors: Ruisheng Shi, Yulian Ge, Lina Lan, Zhiyuan Peng, Shenwen Lin, Lin Li Authors
Info & Claims
WWW '24: Companion Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 2024 
Pages 678 - 681 
https://doi.org/10.1145/3589335.3651487
Published: 13 May 2024 Publication History 
Get Access
WWW '24: Companion Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 2024
Deanonymizing Transactions Originating from Monero Tor Hidden Service Nodes
Pages 678 - 681
ACM Digital Library 
Abstract
Monero is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency that incorporates anonymity networks (such
as Tor and I2P) and deploys the Dandelion++ protocol to prevent malicious attackers  
from linking transactions with their source IPs. However, this paper highlights a
vulnerability in Monero's integration of the Tor network, which allows an attacker to
successfully deanonymize transactions originating from Monero Tor hidden service nodes
at the network-layer level. 
Our approach involves injecting malicious Monero Tor hidden service nodes into the
Monero P2P network to correlate the onion addresses of incoming Monero Tor hidden 
service peers with their originating transactions. And by sending a signal watermark
embedded with the onion address to the Tor circuit, we establish a correlation between
the onion address and IP address of a Monero Tor hidden service node. Ultimately, we
correlate transactions and IPs of Monero Tor hidden service nodes.  
Through experimentation on the Monero testnet, we provide empirical evidence of the 
effectiveness of our approach in successfully deanonymizing transactions originating
from Monero Tor hidden service nodes.
Supplemental Material
MP4 File 
Supplemental video
Download   7.23 MB
 https://dl.acm.org/doi/suppl/10.1145/3589335.3651487/suppl_file/shp4046.mp4
References
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p.s.  the best advice i've ever read about big money is to "avoid not evade"