Bellingcat tracked the GRU bitcoin transactions related to elections in the USA

The Bellingcat research team tracked down a transaction of 0.026043 BTC dated February 1, 2016, which special prosecutor in the case of Russian intervention in the US presidential elections Robert Muller associated with the activities of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian Federation (GRU) and the hacking of servers of the National Committee of the Democratic Party of the USA.

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– Bellingcat (@bellingcat) February 1, 2019

Representatives of the organization stressed that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are involved in criminal schemes, but acknowledged that many users still use the technology for its intended purpose.

At the same time, the researchers added that the Bitcoin network is not completely anonymous and transactions can be tracked.

So, they set out to find the transaction appearing in the text of the charge against 12 alleged agents of the GRU. To do this, Bellingcat used the traditional blockchain block browser.

The first block produced on February 1, 2016 is # 396049. In each subsequent block for that day, the researchers searched for the desired transaction using the Ctrl-F combination.

It is noteworthy that they managed to detect two transactions for the same amount in blocks # 396060 and # 396123, but in the first it was 0.02604322 BTC.

Address 1LQv8aKtQoiY5M5zkaG8RWL7LMwNzVaVqR sent two transactions: 0.026043 BTC on 1NZ4MSeYcDKFiPRt8h7VK6XMhShwzhCzCp and 4.54325747 BTC to 1AK79g9gpvZ8jn2C9MsWQpijMFA5JaTdqP.

The researchers also checked all the blocks of January 31 and February 2 for the presence of similar translations, but they did not find any. Thus, Bellingcat concluded, the alleged GRU officers used the address 1LQv8aKtQoiY5M5zkaG8RWL7LMwNzVaVqR to finance their activities.

Recall that in October, the US Department of Justice accused employees of the GRU of the Russian Federation in cyber attacks and other illegal actions using cryptocurrencies.

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