Investigating Cryptocurrencies

CHAPTER 8Detecting the Use of Cryptocurrencies

I was speaking to a police officer in a European country a few weeks ago, and he was explaining to me why he would not need to read this book. He said they had invested in an expensive cryptocurrency analysis tool, so he would not need to actually understand how cryptocurrencies worked or how to investigate them manually. I asked him if he realized that the tool only analyzed Bitcoin. His reply was, “Are there others?” This was somewhat of a shock to me. When I mentioned a few names, he realized that he had heard of them but wasn't worried because none of them had appeared in cases. I added the word “yet” to the end of his sentence. I reminded him that seven or eight years ago, high-tech crime units were saying something similar about Apple computers: that they didn't need knowledge to investigate those computers because none ever appeared in the lab. Now, of course, a huge number appear as evidence, and those high-tech units are often still behind the curve. Worse, they've probably just bought and been trained on a tool, and do not actually know the fundamentals of OSX investigation without the software tool.

I then asked this police officer if the high-tech crime team always actively looked for the existence of cryptocurrency use on the hard drives and mobile devices they analyzed. He admitted that not only was that not done, he didn't think they would really know what they were looking for. I humbly suggested he read this book. ...