Can SDN deanonymize Bitcoin users?

Abstract

According to the Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment (IOCTA) 2019 report, Bitcoin is still the currency of choice in criminal markets and as payment for cyber-related extortion attempts, such as from ransomware or a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack. Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer electronic cash system first proposed by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. By design, Bitcoin is a pseudonymous coin, meaning that users can transact with the currency without revealing their true identity. To tackle the challenge of Bitcoin-related crime, a range of deanonymization techniques have been proposed. In general, these solutions are limited by the time and resources required to predict likely transaction owners. In this paper, we propose the first software-defined network (SDN)-based Bitcoin transaction mapping solution. We analyse the Bitcoin transaction process in an SDN environment and demonstrate a deterministic approach to deanonymize users in Bitcoin's network.