Fake vaccination certificates, terrible recordings of children, the trade in weapons: criminals do lousy business in the dark part of the Internet. But the police and the judiciary are upgrading – with a new search engine.
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Max Muth
The friendly foreign police authority only sent two things: a public Bitcoin address and an IP address from Germany, along with a note that the data was found in connection with an investigation into child abuse. In the past, the Bavarian authorities’ investigations would usually have ended at this point. Too little information to find further evidence. It’s different today. The investigators at the Central Office Cybercrime Bamberg (ZCB) only need a few seconds to find an important connection. You type the Bitcoin address into your new machine, two seconds later you have a result. On a well-known page on the dark web that offered images of child abuse, the Bitcoin address was listed as a means of payment years ago. A proof that should convince a judge.