Pentagon Launches Effort To Assess Crypto's Threat To National Security

The military's innovation office is launching a sweeping review of cryptocurrencies to assess threats to national security and law enforcement posed by the rise of digital assets, the Washington Post reported Friday. From the report: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- better known as DARPA, the office that developed the earliest technology undergirding the internet -- has hired crypto intelligence firm Inca Digital to conduct the year-long project. The company will develop tools that give the Pentagon a granular view of crypto markets' inner workings, in part to help authorities crack down on illicit uses of digital assets. "The program underway here involves mapping out the cryptocurrency universe in some detail," Mark Flood, a program manager with the agency, said in an interview with The Washington Post. Beyond fighting illicit finance, the office aims to use the data for insights into dynamics shaping traditional financial markets, where detailed information is harder to gather. The deal is the latest evidence that federal agencies are ramping up efforts to thwart rogue regimes, terrorists and other criminal actors using crypto to fund their operations.

First they laugh

[Shaitan]

First they laugh at you, NOW they are fighting you, then...

Re:

[gtall]

So, you invested your money in Fly-by-Night Crypto Emporium. Did you keep the receipt?

Re:

[Shaitan]

All the money I have in cryptocurrency came from cryptocurrency. All my investments are required to pay for themselves. But I've invested more than money into cryptocurrency and the primary reasons for doing it are ideological and technical not financial.

It isn't money those you are supporting with your antagonism are fighting about/for. It is about control and power. Why do you think the current administration with their notions of love, peace, harmony and abolishing the black market through legalization a

Will save you the trouble.

[pimpsoftcom]

Web3 and blockchain are scams and they should be outlawed exactly as http://concerned.tech/ [concerned.tech] requested of congress.

Re:

[Tablizer]

Outlaw microservices also. Too many Resume Oriented Programmers add them merely for Brownie Points.

Bureaucracies are a little slow.

[Tablizer]

"The Pentagon is planning on forming a committee to assess whether to study Crypto's possible threat to national security. But first they are forming a committee to agree on a common definition of crypto threats. In other news, they agreed in a preliminary study that Galileo was likely right about the Sun being the center of our solar system. However, some members of the committee still insist the committee is the actual center".

Bernie Madoff

[jobslave]

They should have a little chat with Bernie. I'm confident he can educate them exactly how this works.

Re:

[splutty]

Not even Bernie was that brazen :D

Crypto is built on lies

[Locke2005]

The fact that the US government has on multiple occasions recovered millions of dollars worth of stolen cryptocurrency tells me that it isn't as secure as people say it is!

Re:

[firewrought]

Too many cryptographic applications hype the mathematical strength of their algorithms in such a way as to make implicitly false promises about their operational security (against social engineering and side-channel attacks, for instance). There needs to be a name for this... perhaps "crypto-guilding"? If the algorithm itself is weak (or poorly implemented), then that's just normal "crypto snake oil".

Not first crypto work for DoD...

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

I can't elaborate, but the DoD has been working on various blockchain and "bitcoin" related stuff for some time. But this project in particular is in response to various ransomware attacks, especially ones like what hit Colonial Pipeline. That was "too close for comfort", so they are trying to have a system that can map out "money flows in and out of blockchain systems"...I assume that such information might then be used to strike back at foreign APTs who they can prove did the attack, like the hit on Cycl