Intelligence and research firm Ciphertrace said in a press release today that it has created the “world's first” Monero payment tracking tool for law enforcement agencies, specifically the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Despite the firm's claims, there is no evidence that the company actually has such tools.
Monero has long been a thorn in the soft spots of intelligence agencies, since all transactions in this cryptocurrency are hidden, and users' wallets are completely inaccessible to hacking. The CIA claims that 90% of payments to this network are used by criminals, and the volume of Monero on sites for the sale of illegal goods exceeds Bitcoin and accounts for ⅔ of the darknet's turnover. On my own behalf, I will add that the volume of illegal arms and drug trade in the world with the use of quite legal dollars is thousands of orders of magnitude higher than the turnover of all cryptocurrencies combined.
However, the press release provided by Ciphertace, published on August 31, 2020, does not provide any evidence that the company has any Monero tracking tools.
Information security engineer and longtime Monero supporter Seth Simmons doesn't believe Ciphertrace's claims without factual evidence. Since the founding of Monero in 2014, there has not been a single fact of hacking the blockchain of this coin, and what Ciphertace declares is most likely related to the identification of users of centralized exchanges that have full KYC and all AML procedures are followed.
The entire developed transaction tracking mechanism is associated with the installation of a special protocol on crypto-exchanges, according to which the exchanges automatically open for special services all the data of clients who have Monero on the exchange wallet.
If privacy is important to you, you should stop using Monero on centralized exchanges. You need to sell Monero in anonymous exchangers or on exchanges without KYC.
