TY - GEN
T1 - An analysis of anonymity in bitcoin using P2P network traffic
AU - Koshy, Philip
AU - Koshy, Diana
AU - McDaniel, Patrick
N1 - Funding Information:
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Grants No. CNS-1228700 and CNS-0905447. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Publisher Copyright:
© International Financial Cryptography Association 2014.
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - Over the last 4 years, Bitcoin, a decentralized P2P cryptocurrency, has gained widespread attention. The ability to create pseudoanonymous financial transactions using bitcoins has made the currency attractive to users who value their privacy. Although previous work has analyzed the degree of anonymity Bitcoin offers using clustering and flow analysis, none have demonstrated the ability to map Bitcoin addresses directly to IP data. We propose a novel approach to creating and evaluating such mappings solely using real-time transaction traffic collected over 5 months. We developed heuristics for identifying ownership relationships between Bitcoin addresses and IP addresses. We discuss the circumstances under which these relationships become apparent and demonstrate how nearly 1,000 Bitcoin addresses can be mapped to their likely owner IPs by leveraging anomalous relaying behavior.
AB - Over the last 4 years, Bitcoin, a decentralized P2P cryptocurrency, has gained widespread attention. The ability to create pseudoanonymous financial transactions using bitcoins has made the currency attractive to users who value their privacy. Although previous work has analyzed the degree of anonymity Bitcoin offers using clustering and flow analysis, none have demonstrated the ability to map Bitcoin addresses directly to IP data. We propose a novel approach to creating and evaluating such mappings solely using real-time transaction traffic collected over 5 months. We developed heuristics for identifying ownership relationships between Bitcoin addresses and IP addresses. We discuss the circumstances under which these relationships become apparent and demonstrate how nearly 1,000 Bitcoin addresses can be mapped to their likely owner IPs by leveraging anomalous relaying behavior.
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U2 - 10.1007/978-3-662-45472-5_30
DO - 10.1007/978-3-662-45472-5_30
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84916608777
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
SP - 469
EP - 485
BT - Financial Cryptography and Data Security - 18th International Conference, FC 2014, Revised Selected Papers
A2 - Safavi-Naini, Reihaneh
A2 - Christin, Nicolas
PB - Springer Verlag
T2 - 18th International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security, FC 2014
Y2 - 3 March 2014 through 7 March 2014
ER -