Interpol Guidelines to Digital Forensics First Responders

[cygan]

interpol has now published a document in which many known wallets are listed, which are to be seized during an arrest/search, for example.
even if the search should take place at an innocent person and a wallet was found, it will be seized and you will most likely be rid of your funds for the time being.
the document also shows what steps the digital forensics takes in these cases...


https://interpol.int/content/download/16243/file/Guidelines_to_Digital_Forensics_First_Responders_V7.pdf&usg=AOvVaw3T011uBzI_N471pl1FPe2b

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[hd49728]

They only can seize your bitcoin if they arrest you and get your keys then sweep it to their wallets.

They can have easier seizure against your bitcoin if you store your coins on a centralized exchange. They can send an official request to that exchange and get the exchange support to seize coins in your account. However, people must know that they don't have any coin in their account on an exchange. It is only a number and the centralized exchange will only send coins to you when you submit your withdrawal.

If Interpol, governments can control that centralized exchange, they can seize any coin in the black list.

Like many Tether USDT was seized so far. They have easier works with centralized stable coins.

PSA: Most Stablecoins Can Be Frozen, Even in Your Own Wallets
Stable coins and blacklists
https://dune.com/phabc/usdt---banned-addresses

[DaveF]

Looks to me more of a list of standard things to look for when doing a search and seizure.

They were already coming in to get things with a warrant / court order. Makes you wonder if they were loosing cases or not getting what they came for because the people doing the raids were missing things that they should have taken.

In the end however, it is trivial to hide a seed or private key in such a way that you know about it but the police will never ever be able to find it. And if they do, unless they know how to get to it will more then likely destroy it trying to get to it.

However, as we have seen many times here. People are lazy, it's on a piece of paper labeled private key.

-Dave

[NotATether]

So now Interpol is encouraging police to seize anyone's cryptocurrency, as if it is a tool used only by narcotics and arms dealers?

It looks like they are still living in 2013 and not 2023.

If you are an innocent person (for I have no pity for criminals) and you are about to be raided by some law enforcement somewhere, I advice converting the seed words into the 128 (or 256 for 24 words) bits of entropy, encrypt it with AES-256 with a password chosen by you, write the password down, and re-encode the AES-256 as a 24-word seed phrase and write that down too.

I already have a pair of encrypt/decrypt programs handy if you want to do that: https://github.com/ZenulAbidin/encdec

The result will look like a dummy seed phrase, but it will usually be an invalid seed phrase because the checksum at the end will not match up. Either way, it is almost certain that the resulting private keys will have no coins inside them due to how HD extended key derivation works.

[Nwada001]

It's really funny how these law enforcement agents are just getting their hands full of work for nothing. This kind of law is telling their associates to treat every suspect as a criminal, as if someone stole something from the government and every piece of material could be used as evidence and help them wrap up their case. (That sounds ridiculous.)

And how do they intend to do this, by the way? Are people really that stupid, or will I say very lazy, to make their phrase and private key very noticeable? Or keep it in a very open place that anyone who worked in for an arrest will just see it and go away with them, or will they have to forcefully take it from their suspect in every way possible (that will be a human rights violation)? I really don't think it will make more of a difference from what they were actually practicing; only those who are not careful enough can apprehend their holdings.

[LFC_Bitcoin]

They would never find my private keys and I’m pretty confident I could stand a good amount of torture to ensure I didn’t give them up too.

A good idea is to keep like 5% of your bitcoin stash somewhere separate to the other 95%. That way if you are ever threatened with arrest, prison time or even a $5 wrench attack (adjusted to $9 wrench due to brrrrr induced money printing) you can give up the smaller stash and keep your big stash.

[Dr.Bitcoin_Strange]

A good idea is to keep like 5% of your bitcoin stash somewhere separate to the other 95%. That way if you are ever threatened with arrest, prison time or even a $5 wrench attack (adjusted to $9 wrench due to brrrrr induced money printing) you can give up the smaller stash and keep your big stash.

You have a good idea here, sir, but to be honest with you, in my country, you had better not even give up anything to the police or military force, like showing or giving up like 5%; they will just assume you still have quite a lot more holdings before you were able to give out five percent. So, if maybe the level of torture was just 10% before you gave up the five percent holding, they will increase the torture state to 50% just to forcefully get the information they want. There is this popular phrase in my country that says, "If the police torture you, you will confess both what you are guilty of and what you are not guilty of."

I know that some countries' police are friendly, though.

But based on what you said, I will likely go with your idea, share my asset into two, and hide 95% of it somewhere safe (that they can't access). The remaining 5%, I will not even give it up to them freely, but I will just keep a bit of a difficult trace for them, which they will still find out for themselves. So that when they do find out the 5 percent, they will themselves be convinced that that's just all I'm holding. If they doubt, let them keep searching and torturing me; they will never find the rest, and I will not say any sh*t to them.

[Artemis3]

I think they need to mention somewhere of the need to maintain the private keys confidential, not let them be seen by others who could just rush to steal the coins. Like those American cops that showed seed words on tv or something.

[UniJoin]

However, as we have seen many times here. People are lazy, it's on a piece of paper labeled private key.

For some reason, I always thought that having a cold wallet obliges you not to keep it at home (since law enforcement agencies have additional questions, such as "where is the private key, etc."). I have one and I don't keep it at home, just like private keys.

Things get a little easier if you live in a private house! You can easily pack and bury or concrete these things in such a way that, if necessary, they can be obtained within 5 minutes. Important note: you need to save at least your Bitcoin address (online) that you could replenish the balance at any time (without opening the stash).

[DaveF]

They would never find my private keys and I’m pretty confident I could stand a good amount of torture to ensure I didn’t give them up too.

A good idea is to keep like 5% of your bitcoin stash somewhere separate to the other 95%. That way if you are ever threatened with arrest, prison time or even a $5 wrench attack (adjusted to $9 wrench due to brrrrr induced money printing) you can give up the smaller stash and keep your big stash.

You have the $5 wrench Wrecking Bar https://www.harborfreight.com/12-in-gooseneck-wrecking-bar-69288.html in which criminals are trying to get your BTC
The 5% / 95% might work for that.

Once you get the police, courts, and so on involved it becomes a different story. In a lot of countries, if they have proof that you have the private keys and are hiding them they may or may not lock you up until you give them over. Or just make your life miserable until you do.

However, they will be watching those addresses that they think belong to you and if those coins ever move you are going to be getting an anal probe from the government that even Paul would appreciate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU6gPaQrQrQ

-Dave

[Kryptowerk]

They would never find my private keys and I’m pretty confident I could stand a good amount of torture to ensure I didn’t give them up too.

A good idea is to keep like 5% of your bitcoin stash somewhere separate to the other 95%. That way if you are ever threatened with arrest, prison time or even a $5 wrench attack (adjusted to $9 wrench due to brrrrr induced money printing) you can give up the smaller stash and keep your big stash.

You have the $5 wrench Wrecking Bar https://www.harborfreight.com/12-in-gooseneck-wrecking-bar-69288.html in which criminals are trying to get your BTC
The 5% / 95% might work for that.

Once you get the police, courts, and so on involved it becomes a different story. In a lot of countries, if they have proof that you have the private keys and are hiding them they may or may not lock you up until you give them over. Or just make your life miserable until you do.

However, they will be watching those addresses that they think belong to you and if those coins ever move you are going to be getting an anal probe from the government that even Paul would appreciate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU6gPaQrQrQ

-Dave

You already mentioned it briefly with "they will be watching those addresses" - Which I think is the main issue here, chain-analysis will probably work well to connect all the dots and even find "hidden" keys. Maybe not the private ones to directly have access, but watching via the public addresses.
Except for the 1%, maybe 2% of folks that really know what they are doing, I would guess that the vast majority of people storing their BTC does not do so in a truely private / hidden way.

[Similificator]

Welp, seems like the interpol has really invested a lot of time and resources just to get a hold of other people's investments, lol. That would only mean a bunch of work added to the digital forensics team. Not that I am saying it's completely useless but the ones who would be massively affected by this are those that are small time criminals or those that aren't even criminals. The real criminals would most probably be able to find workarounds from this and never get their hidden cryptos found.

[o48o]

So now Interpol is encouraging police to seize anyone's cryptocurrency, as if it is a tool used only by narcotics and arms dealers?

It looks like they are still living in 2013 and not 2023.

If you are an innocent person (for I have no pity for criminals) and you are about to be raided by some law enforcement somewhere, I advice converting the seed words into the 128 (or 256 for 24 words) bits of entropy, encrypt it with AES-256 with a password chosen by you, write the password down, and re-encode the AES-256 as a 24-word seed phrase and write that down too.

I already have a pair of encrypt/decrypt programs handy if you want to do that: https://github.com/ZenulAbidin/encdec

The result will look like a dummy seed phrase, but it will usually be an invalid seed phrase because the checksum at the end will not match up. Either way, it is almost certain that the resulting private keys will have no coins inside them due to how HD extended key derivation works.

I am pretty sure that if interpol is after you you aren't going to be just anyone.

Nice for you to share that link but would that really work? When you leave yourself clues how to decrypt your wallet you leave clues to expert too.
And just like it says, they are going to look for anything that resembles passwords too. And for sure they are using every possible combination for brute forcing in every way they can think of.

I am thinking that Vitalik was on to something by giving half of the privatekey to someone he trusted. It might not stop interpol but i don't think Vitalik would need to stop them as he is legit.