While some custodial Bitcoin companies are routinely abusing blockchain analysis as a tool to blackmail their customers out of their personal information with the threat that they take their money if they don’t provide it, it does not have any news value, as it is legal.
However, recently, the “Blockchain Analysis as Ransomware” concept has evolved to a new level, where a traditional ransomware software, MAZE recognized the business opportunity in it.
MAZE took the concept of a ransomware and twisted it. Instead of making you unable to access your information, they make everyone to able to do that.
Among other personal information of yours, they publish your Bitcoin public keys, thus they leak everything that you have ever done with Bitcoin on your compromised computer.
This raises the question: When will they put two and two together and start messaging us that they have our wallet clusters and all our past financial transactions and publish it if we don’t pay?
