COW: Countering privacy-enhancing challenges of cryptocurrencies, OSINT and wireless

Criminal networks increasingly misuse privacy enhancing technologies to protect
their illegal operations against law enforcement agencies and legal consequences
- particularly in organised crime and related areas.

These networks leverage
illicit online marketplaces to coordinate activities such as drug production,
trafficking, cybercrime, and crime-as-a-service. To evade prosecution, they use
end-to-end encrypted communication using platforms / networks like Tor, Telegram,
and Signal, while privacy-enhancing cryptocurrencies, i.e., Monero and Zcash, and
advanced wallets, e.g., Trezor, Ledger, Samourai or Wasabi, facilitate the
anonymous transfer of value. When it comes to physical security and smart
technology, wireless and IoT devices are employed to support and secure their
operations, e.g., to monitor drug production or deploying wireless surveillance
systems at target sites.

The project Countering Privacy-Enhancing
Challenges of Cryptocurrencies, OSINT, and Wireless (COW) aims to develop
mission-ready methods and tools to support law enforcement and digital forensic
teams in investigating and countering the criminal use of secure communications,
privacy-enhancing cryptocurrencies, and smart IoT/wireless devices. The project
will also design and deliver specialized training and curricula for law
enforcement agencies (LEAs) and judicial authorities, equipping them with the
knowledge and skills needed to process and interpret evidence collected through
these advanced tools.

COW's methodology mirrors the different stages of
investigations in cyber-enabled crime: combining physical and digital traces,
adding valuable insights from network analysis and monitoring cryptocurrency
flows, proceeding with OSINT investigations, and supporting a new methods for
gathering digital evidence from covert, in-field operations.