[jordan314]

Can't law enforcement follow the transactions of the public address of the ransom bitcoin wallet until the bitcoin is sold?

[billharrison]

That's assuming the attacker doesn't know how to launder the coins. It is not very hard.

[lossolo]

There are services that will mix your coins making it impossible to track because he will receive other people coins from the pool.

[21]

Not impossible, just hard.

And the cops can go and track each individual person from that pool if they really care. Even if we are talking about thousands.

Remember the story from a few days ago where to track a possible spy they went through all glasses prescriptions from a city.

[lossolo]

It's different beast. It's almost impossible if done right. How would you track this person? You only see end transactions from those addresses which are not mixed with coins of attackers. You would need to check EVERY possible place where bitcoin exchange happen and there hundreds in hundreds of countries in blind to check if bitcoin address x was used there. Then some countries maybe even will not give you any information because electronic currency doesn't exist in their law and it's not a felony to use mixing service etc. etc. That's why they use bitcoin in the first place for 99% of criminal activities in Internet.

[QML]

Do you think it would be possible for those services to block or 'embargo' transactions from 'tainted' addresses, such as the ones used for the cyberattacks' ransom?

[lossolo]

Why would they? It's against their business model. They don't have company name and street address on their sites for a reason.

[zigzigzag]

There are a handful of Bitcoin exchanges that don't follow anti-money laundering laws and presumably that's how these ransomware guys cash out, as it's been a problem for a while now.