BlockThreat - Week 16, 2019

Fancy Bear | CEX | Electrum | EOS

Welcome to this week’s newsletter! The Mueller report was released and contained plenty of interesting revelations about the use of cryptocurrency by both state actors and also investigators following their trail on the blockchain.

News:

• Cybercrime and Cryptocurrency in the Mueller Report — the report contains detailed investigation of hacking and dumping operations by the Fancy Bear APT group. It was particularly interesting to read about the widespread use of cryptocurrency (page 36) to fund hacking operations as well as trying to hide their source by mining Bitcoin on CEX.io instead of purchasing it. This opens up a potential new threat to exchanges and miners from financially unmotivated actors interested in obtaining a relatively anonymous source of funds to sponsor their operations. On the other hand, the use of cryptocurrency has also enhanced the investigation and attribution thanks to blockchain forensics.

• Japanese Regulators to Introduce New Rules Regarding Exchanges’ Cold Wall…