Terrorist organizations like ISIS can operate with financial impunity using bitcoin. This dark web, also known as the deep web, gives users a high level of anonymity, and is where Wulkan found evidence of ISIS using bitcoin. Wulkan, 25, uncovered his findings by gaining access to an off-grid Turkish forum located in the dark web, a part of the internet that is mostly "dark" to traditional search engines, and filled with difficult encryptions, protocols and applications. Because of this, Wulkan believes ISIS is using bitcoin for more than just a single transaction. Terrorist activity on the Internet has been a concern of investigators for some time, for both recruiting on operatives and raising funds for terrorist activity, but in the dark web these concerns get lost in places search engines cannot go. Wulkan told HAARETZ that the evidence points to a single transaction that could be a one-time exchange, or maybe a hoax, but he believes this to be unlikely. Increasing press and exposure to bitcoin's alternative transactions gave way to Wulkan's discovery that broke late last month. It is an esoteric way of doing business, but with bitcoin technology's increasing popularity, what once was merely techno-speak has given way to more familiarity. Additionally, operating in the dark web makes investigating these cryptocurrency transactions inaccessible to most investigators. ISIS, reportedly, uses bitcoin to distribute payments to operatives working inside the terrorist organization, according to Wulkan, and accepts donations in bitcoin.īitcoin allows financial transactions to be dispersed with little fear that they will be traced and linked back to the payer or payee. Wulkan has uncovered evidence that the so-called Islamic State (ISIS, or ISIL) terrorist group, whose latest brutal execution of a Jordanian air force pilot outraged the world and incited reprisal attacks from Jordanian military, is using bitcoin to fund their terrorist activities. But according to Ido Wulkan, an intelligence analyst based in Tel Aviv and working for a Singapore-based cyber intelligence company, that is exactly what's happening. When software developer Satoshi Nakamoto introduced bitcoin in 2008 as an alternative currency independent of a central authority, funding international terrorist organizations was certainly not part of the original concept.
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