Digital intelligence firm Cellebrite has launched its “Cellebrite Crypto Tracer” solution.
The new offering is powered by CipherTrace and aims to trace illicit cryptocurrencies involved in money laundering, terrorism, drugs, human trafficking, weapon sales and ransomware schemes.
The suite of tools will be available to investigators, analysts and non-technical agents who want to lawfully obtain evidence and trace criminals who use cryptos like Bitcoin (BTC) through the darknet.
Citing figures from an Oxford University study, Cellebrite states that an estimated $76 billion worth of illegal activities involve Bitcoin.
Curating millions of information references to trace transactions
The Cellebrite Crypto Tracer Solution allows investigators to aggregate and curate millions of open-source and private references, deception data, and human intelligence, resulting in a dataset of over 522 million attributable points.
Speaking with Cointelegraph, Leeor Ben-Peretz, chief strategy officer of Cellebrite, states that Cellebrite Crypto Tracer is able to attribute millions of data points, such as account type, account holders, contract types, contract owners and other metadata. It can also pinpoint where the illicit funds were headed, whether that be a wallet or an exchange.
Ben-Peretz said, “Some of the major features of the solution include the ability to conduct risk scoring and profile hundreds of global exchanges, ATMs, mixers, money laundering systems, gambling services, and known criminal addresses and assign risk levels to transactions."
The ongoing fight against illicit crypto transactions
John Jefferies, chief financial analyst of CipherTrace, predicts that, as cryptocurrencies become more mainstream and accepted by traditional financial institutions, criminals will also adopt them more widely, making for a "continued and escalating game of cat and mouse."
"As the market capitalization of crypto grows, larger financial crimes and nation-state scale. Regulatory reform, driven by the updated FATF guidelines, will force jurisdiction arbitrage as new laws are enacted, globally on unsynchronized timelines,” he added.
Jefferies addressed to the recent Twitter hack incident, stating that he believes the situation could have been “much worse and shows that the blockchain community is wising up to the scammers.”
“When cryptocurrencies first emerged, law enforcement agencies had very little understanding about how cryptocurrencies work and that the transactions can be traced on the public ledgers. The situation is much different today. We are working closely with law enforcement agencies on the recent Twitter hacking bitcoin scam, for example,” he concluded.