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Over at Medium, a blogger claims to have an inside source at NSA that claimed that the NSA put in effort to determine the person(s) behind Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of Bitcoin.
According to the blog, the NSA created a "fingerprint" of Nakamoto's writing style(s) and used this fingerprint as follows:
The NSA then took bulk emails and texts collected from their mass surveillance efforts. First through PRISM (a court-approved front-door access to Google and Yahoo user accounts) and then through MUSCULAR (where the NSA copies the data flows across fiber optic cables that carry information among the data centers of Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and Facebook) the NSA was able to place trillions of writings from more than a billion people in the same plane as Satoshi's writings to find his true identity. The effort took less than a month and resulted in positive match.
The blog goes on to discuss that it may be a Chinese or Russian individual or group, possibly a state actor. Of course, that's quite a claim so that would require quite a proof.
The blogger has updated the post to decline to substantiate these rumours.
What do you guys think: does the NSA have the capability to perform such an investigation? And is it cheap enough for them to waste it on this? If so, what's next? the NSA identifying the location of Jimmy Hoffa's body?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Saturday September 02 2017, @01:48AM (1 child)
I don't know anything about the blog or it's claims about Nakamoto. But there is no doubt that the NSA has the capacity, knowledge and ability to create a "fingerprint" of someones writing and then try and match to other pieces or written text in an attempt to try and see if they are written by the same person, or an anonymous text being compared to a known text to identify the author. Within some % degree. You don't even have to be the NSA to do that. But for them it should be even easier then for many others since they should have so much more material to learn from and to compare to.
Is it cheap? That is irrelevant. But it shouldn't be very expensive, after all they already gather all the data so it's not like they are actually paying more for this. This is probably not more then a side project and the data-gathering is already paid for.
Is it a waste of time? No. You have someone that has created a new currency that seem to be taking off or at least fuel parts of an underground economy. That would be something the NSA, and other parts of the US (or any) government, should be interested in.
If they have not found Hoffa by now they probably never will. That said I don't know what a written "fingerprint" has to do with finding Hoffa unless some old mob hitman wrote extensively about it and they can after they identify him water-board him until he tells them where the body is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2017, @02:49AM
But can they attach a finger print like that to a group? If several people edited the document, it must be much more difficult.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by McGruber on Saturday September 02 2017, @01:56AM (7 children)
I've long assumed that bitcoin was developed by the NSA. Bitcoin always seemed to me to be too good to be true.... so I asked myself who employees people that are smart enough to come up with the blockchain AND able to keep their work secret, for decades? The only entity I know of that has people like that is the NSA. (Snowden was a contractor, not a career employee.)
Occam's Razor...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2017, @03:08AM
Seems likely, anonymity was never possible with bitcoin and now we've found out that even the services that supposedly anonymize transactions do not work. Sounds like a great ploy to uncover people that need anonymity and vastly underestimate the level of tracking that gov agencies are now capable of. I'm sure every spook agency was on board with sharing their data, no one they give two shits about (friends that is) would be using BC anyway.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Saturday September 02 2017, @07:20AM
Also note that if you want to cryptanalyze break cryptographic hashes, the Bitcoin blockchain is a perfect source of data: It contains lots of blocks explicitly engineered to have hashes with a large overlap (many zeroes on the end), which is just perfect for analysis.
If hash breaking was the main goal, then it is actually rather ingenious: You covertly hire people to do the work, and have other people pay for it. Also, those other people support the development of cheap ways to generate many hashes, which in itself is a great tool for cryptanalysis.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Saturday September 02 2017, @08:59AM (2 children)
Quite possibly.
Fits right in with my tinfoil hat theory that the NSA funds Skype, bought it for Microsoft, and pays Microsoft to handle it for them. Any conversation the NSA wants Microsoft enters the participant accounts in the database and upon the next connection it gets routed through Microsoft's mother ship.
Back to your theory: there wasn't any target worth that level of effort in the bitcoin world. The NSA is not all that worried about drug lords or drug users. (And if they are, they suck at their jobs). People dealing in truly dangerous shit (weaponized shit) want payment in something more liquid and anonymous than bit coin.
As for the smarts only being available to the NSA, I don't buy that for a minute. They sure lose a lot of stuff for people who are supposed to be smart. Sure the Maths are hard. But that doesn't mean you hire ten smart people and put them in a room and get anything of value out of it.
I suspect are more likely to get something out of someone or some-no-more-than-5 people with good minds and lots of time on their hands.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2017, @11:45AM (1 child)
So the US Gov convinced Microsoft to buy Skype for them. And not long after that when you send a message it gets sent somewhere even if your recipient isn't online. Go figure...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Saturday September 02 2017, @06:56PM
Further, send that recipient a link (to a web server you control), and watch how many times that link gets visited.
This is also a worth while test on any other platform you are considering using.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by dak664 on Saturday September 02 2017, @02:11PM
Which is more likely,
(a) out of the hundreds of thousands of almost matching profiles, the person sought is among the very to, or
(b) the NSA produces a timely misdirection that points away from themselves.
(Score: 1) by Frost on Sunday September 03 2017, @02:02AM
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2017, @02:23AM (1 child)
Then the blogger would have received a visit from the spooks to find who is leaking. The effort to find him would definitely take less than a month and result in a positive match.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Saturday September 02 2017, @07:29AM
Who tells you that the article wasn't placed by some three-letter agency, to scare people away from Bitcoin? ("Oh my god, the Chinese/Russians are behind it? I guess I better stay away!")
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday September 02 2017, @02:26AM
Well, the best the NSA can do is identify the location where they left it.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 5, Interesting) by dbv on Saturday September 02 2017, @02:58AM
Dorian Nakamoto [techcrunch.com], right? Or was it Craig Wright [theguardian.com]?
And now it's an "inside source" at NSA spilling their beans to Medium, no less? To be honest, I didn't even bother reading the article. They're trying real hard to drive up traffic these days.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday September 02 2017, @03:34AM (6 children)
I'm quite sure that the NSA has the resources - all of the resources - to locate any particular individual that they want to go after. But this blogger is just talking shit. Why would the NSA limit itself to the analysis of writing styles, when they have a much broader spectrum of tools to use? Sure, writing styles will lead you to almost anyone, given time. And, that is the whole thrust of the blogger's post - the NSA actually HAS computer time to devote to a search like this.
An organization that has access to just about anything and everything that flows across the net doesn't need to wait all that long, even if writing analysis makes up the primary portion of their investigation. Start with the simplest of analysis of his writing, and "We're half sure this guy is Russian!" "Very well, let's keep monitoring everything that originates in Russia to see what kind of matches we find. Keep up all the rest of the monitoring, just concentrate on Russia." A day, a week, a month later, "Hey Boss, we have some strong matches, but this guy isn't in Russia - he's living in Bolivia." "Great, follow up on it! I want EVERYTHING that he does!"
Yes, of course the NSA is going to find whoever they are looking for. The higher the profile you have, the easier you make their job.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2017, @06:31AM (1 child)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256
agree with: blogger full of crap, and want to + this: all 1 have to do is post NOT LIKE usual when talkin' pseudonymous, and then all this stylometry magick aint worth a trump aid. all nsa good 4 is breakin' into girlz phones to watch them shower. that and making up stories that would make a lie-detector xplode, if that thing worked @ all. go ahead, stylometrize this, muthafucka. ~ 0x9932FE2729B1D963
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2017, @02:53PM
Maybe Satoshi varied his style but forgot to stop PGP-signing all his writings.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday September 02 2017, @09:05AM (3 children)
Not so sure about that.
With every nut-job terrorist running off to the Middle East, the NSA have their computers very busy tracking them, running facial reco, and luring them into kill zones. So much so that the hapless Iraqi Army can pretty much push the terrorists around all they want these days.
With NSA computers busy sifting to the full-take of phone and text traffic, I don't see where they spend much time tracking down a math wiz.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday September 02 2017, @09:16AM
Agreed, thus my final sentence. It's all about priorities. If some math whiz should find a way to become a greater (percieved) threat to our government and our way of life than some terrorists, then the government would devote the necessary resources to finding him.
Keeping a low profile has value.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2017, @02:57PM (1 child)
They seem more concerned with spying on the domestic populace than tracking terrorists. How else do you explain that they can't catch a single terrorist even when they're already known, reported, and plotting in cleartext...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2017, @03:44PM
Frojack is pro Murrica, as long as he thinks they're going after the bad guys we can be proud of our massive surveillance network.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2017, @09:22AM
I build the blockchain...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Post-Nihilist on Saturday September 02 2017, @04:57PM
I was into cryptoanarchy in a time before bitcoin, I remember that most of the concepts required to the development of the bockchain originated around the mixmailer anonymous Usenet posting gateway. The most important one being hashcash: I proof of work currency that was use to make the use of the mixmailer system uneconomic to spammers but almost insignificant compared to the value of anonymous posting to the user.
I am certain that Satoshi was at least a user of the Hashcash system and maybe even one of the pseudonymous dev behind it's integration into the mixmailer network.
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The preferred way to use mixmailer on Usenet was to send a crypted message to a known board and in the message indicate on which random board the reply was expected combined with a new public key to encrypt it. That was a way to foil metadata analysis as there was no conversation thread to follow unless they could somehow break 2048bit RSA 20 years ago...
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I regret leaving the cryptoanarchy community just before the birth of bitcoin... but damm it was a world filled with unsavory character, half of them being into pedophillia, 5% into bombs and terrorism, about 1% into financial crime and the rest being rebellious teenager ( if not in age, in spirit) . I belonged to that last group: anarchy for anarchy's sake....
Be like us, be different, be a nihilist!!!