Chainalysis Successful Deanonymization Attack on Monero
31 points
4 hours ago
| 5 comments
| darkwebinformer.com
| HN
nunobrito
1 hour ago
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This isn't deanonymization, it is modifying and infiltrating nodes to then listen what is happening from naive users connecting to them.

There was never an expectation of privacy when you connect to servers outside your control with non-encrypted data. That is the reason why the article itself mentions that this isn't working when running your own node, as most people do.

This is the same thing as complaining that Monero is no longer anonymous because Windows is capturing screenshots and keyboard presses when you open the desktop app.

Monero remains anonymous by default.

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dodomodo
1 hour ago
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In practice they (allegedly) took anonymouse transaction and linked it to real world identity. Call it what you want.
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walletdrainer
18 minutes ago
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Chainanalysis is certainly not running the Tor attack as described here.

It’s technically possible, but not really practical. We’d have seen darknet markets as they currently exist eradicated a long ago.

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embedding-shape
2 hours ago
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It always seemed weird from Day 1 when I reviewed Monero vs Zcash to rely on anonymization that depends on other nodes and number of honest peers, instead of relying on technical anonymization that Zcash does, seems much more reliable and long-term workable, even though it was much harder and took them longer to arrive at good solutions.
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pclmulqdq
1 hour ago
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If Zcash had privacy by default, they would have won against Monero for being the private cryptocurrency. As it stands, any private transaction on the Zcash chain stands out like a sore thumb and the use of de-anonymized transactions around it make it easy to figure out how much money was moved. It was a missed layer 8 opportunity on the part of Zcash.

This attack doesn't seem to work if you run a monero node, though.

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embedding-shape
59 minutes ago
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You'd have a bit more credibility if your complaint was more up to date :) Zcash wallets have defaulted to shielded accounts and transactions for some time already.
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pjdkoch
2 hours ago
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September 17, 2024
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bhouston
37 minutes ago
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So chainalysis is working for governments now? I guess it makes sense.
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MadsRC
28 minutes ago
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Now? Chainalysis has always worked for governments…

It was basically spawned out of the government needing help with investigating crypto - I think it was Mt. Gox…

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