Cryptocurrency forensics
Also known as: Kryptowährungs-Forensik, blockchain forensics, crypto tracing
Tracing of transactions on public blockchains to attribute addresses, flows and service providers, for instance after a ransomware payment.
The analysis relies on a few, predominantly United States of America (US) providers with proprietary formats and sharply rising licence fees; historical data sits partly with a single company. The European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (incl. EC3) (Europol) report warns of dependency and of misinterpretation by users who cannot check tool outputs – proceedings have already failed on this. For companies the priority is clean documentation of their own transaction and early involvement of law enforcement.