By Jamie Redman,
Two tech firms are joining forces to improve cryptocurrency security and curb cyber crime. Skry and Terbium Labs announced their partnership to monitor public key transactions over the dark web.
Skry & Terbium Labs Partner To Analyze Permissionless Blockchain Activity
Back in April, blockchain analytics firm Coinalytics rebranded to Skry, Inc. The name Skry means “foretell the future using a crystal ball or other reflective surface.”
On October 12, the company announced a partnership with intelligence company Terbium Labs to help fight cyber crime. The companies say they will help financial institutions, Bitcoin companies and law enforcement investigate criminal activities.
While announcing the collaborative effort, the companies also released a detailed case study on the darknet. In essence, they explained Bitcoin and blockchain technology are “under attack” from criminal elements. The data firms also mentioned unlawful activities including extortion, hacked exchanges, and financing drug trafficking.
Skry and Terbium said, “permissionless blockchains and the nature of digital and decentralized currencies have opened the door to a wide variety of illicit actors.”
Furthermore, mixing applications such as CoinJoin, Confidential Transactions and Mimblewimble provide privacy and anonymity. The report explained that even though these platforms enhance user privacy, they “impede investigators trying to trace transactions back to a real-world entity.”
Skry and Terbium believe it’s necessary to be able to manage threat intelligence and risk solutions over the clear and dark web. Skry CEO Fabio Federici said Terbium Lab’s attributes will benefit the objective, stating:
We are excited to work with Terbium Labs and enrich our platform with data from the dark web.— Making Terbium Labs’ exceptional technology part of Skry’s blockchain intelligence platform will unlock unprecedented insights and provide critical information to our customers.
The Case Study
The company’s case study explains how the firms are countering criminal activity. Skry says they use data feeds from Terbium’s Matchlight system to monitor Bitcoin public keys.
As a result, Matchlight can index all public keys used on Tor, protected forums, darknet marketplaces (DNM), i2p, and more. Following this procedure, the feeds are siphoned into Skry’s analytics platform which delves further into the analysis.
The report said the firm’s tested 3,697,408 distinct URLs extracted. Large amounts of appearances were found on sites like Pastebin, DNMs, code repositories, and more. According to Skry, these “appearances can provide crucial data needed to advance an investigation.”
The analysis revealed roughly 11,000 different URLs tethered to DNMs, with 22,000 public key sightings. Out of that data, Skry said it managed to identify 798 unique Bitcoin public keys. According to the report, the biggest DNM’s are Dream and AlphaBay, followed by a psychedelic forum called The Majestic Garden.
The Firms’ Mission to Monitor Illegal Cryptocurrency Usage
Skry and Terbium said combining big data, artificial intelligence and blockchain gives their software significant advantages. Skry added that collaboration provides the forensic tools to investigate suspicious activity. The company says their clients will benefit from the new dark web data intelligence system.
Terbium’s Matchlight is specifically designed to scan for illicit activity through data analysis. In this case, it will monitor Bitcoin public keys and alert Skry’s analytic platform. Terbium Labs COO Tyler Carbone believes the software will enhance the industry.
“We are pleased to collaborate with Skry in their efforts to safeguard digital currencies and preserve the demand for enhanced privacy in public ledgers,” said Carbone. “Terbium’s unique approach to dark web monitoring gives Skry customers the crucial data needed to advance an investigation, mitigate risk, and combat fraudulent or criminal activity quickly.”
The rise in blockchain monitoring continues to grow, and firms using these tools believe they have the right. Basically, as a public ledger, Bitcoin opens the doorways to these surveillance techniques.
However, new privacy-enhancing methods are regularly conceived, and the report shows the firms are concerned. At Scaling Bitcoin Milan, fungibility was a huge part of the discussion — and this is pretty much why privacy considerations remain important.