NZ Darknet Market Forums

xmrsnakeoil

Member

Registered: 2021-08-13

Posts: 1

Monero is not untraceable

There seems to be a big misconception that Monero is untraceable. This is not true. When you pay someone using monero, it is published on a public blockchain for everyone to see. The claim of enhanced privacy comes from a feature which adds to the recipient data some decoys (although it does have another feature that conceals the amounts spent). So everyone can see who you paid , but because of the decoys (lets say 10 decoys), it isn't known for sure which off the 11 recipients actually received the funds.

In my opinion this is not privacy. It is like having a stash house and you are trying to send a product to the house while all your movements are public ; so you visit ten random houses in addition to the stash house. People watching know the product is at one of the 11 houses but they don't know which.

With analysis, probabilities can be assigned to each decoy. LE can fill the network with their own transactions/addresses hoping they will be chosen as decoys - this helps them de-anonymize. Cascading de-anonymizing begins to occur where becomes easier as more is revealed.

This is not just conjecture , in 2016 a lot of the past monero transactions were already de-anonymized . DNM vendors don't seem to be aware of this. The solution by the monero creators was to just add more decoys!

Past de-anonymizing  described here - https://arxiv.org/pdf/1704.04299.pdf

Last edited by xmrsnakeoil (2021-08-13 16:30)

Drcannabinoid

Verified Vendor

Registered: 2020-08-12

Posts: 53

Re: Monero is not untraceable

Wonder why IRS is paying $500,000 to anybody who can crack it's code then?

Maybe put your solution forward and get your money.

There have been past Exploitation that have been fixed, but as safe as houses.

zac

Member

Registered: 2021-07-10

Posts: 60

Re: Monero is not untraceable

Go onto 4chan /biz/ and find the thread "/XMR/ Monero General", current one is https://boards.4channel.org/biz/thread/39695326

Xar777

Member

Registered: 2019-04-30

Posts: 122

Re: Monero is not untraceable

@xmrsnakeoil - sorry but your opinion is based on flawed information and your knowledge of how monero actually works is, jackshit.

unlike bitcoin, your wallet addresses are NOT published on the blockchain and neither are the payment amounts. go have a look at a monero blockchain explorer...

what your crudely attempting to describe is just ring signatures and it is only one of the layers of anonymization.

the proposed attack your talking about is a type of transaction flooding attack which floods the network with spam transaction competing with all the real transactions in the hope they will be used in the following ring signatures. this is a well known attack and understood already (since like forever). your completely missing some other crucial anonymizing parts of monero, like stealth addresses, arguably one of the most important features to anonymize transactions. even if someone could in-theory brute-force all ring signatures as you describe then you would only discover *some* of the addresses amongst the decoys, these can't be linked to a destination wallet or any other past transaction (because of stealth addresses) and with completely unknown payment amounts (because of ringCT)... without access to additional information (like private keys) breaking ring signatures is not very useful for LE, it could potentially be used in combination with other methods though, like an entrapment payment (maybe?)

unless you can also break stealth addresses and ringCT at the same time (in which case we are all fucked) these kind of chain analysis methods are pretty limited in nature since the wallet addresses and payment amounts cannot be mathematically derived from the blockchain without access to a wallets private or view key. also, transaction spamming events are obvious to anyone observing the network and can (and have) been easily countered. the monero network has always been under heavy and constant attack right from the start and has a proven track record of countering adversaries. RandomX is a good example of this.

your WAY more likely to be traced via side-channels in today's climate, e.g. targeted surveillance, or if your really casual, LE simply asking to hand over your data from a centralized exchange which has your personal details, just like what the IRD has already done to all NZ exchanges. nothing can ever be 100% secure but monero is a very strong link in your chain, it's more than likely you have much weaker links to exploit.

Last edited by Xar777 (2021-08-17 12:50)