US recovers slice of multi-million ransom paid to Colonial Pipeline hackers
08 June, 2021
The US Department of Justice said it recovered huge amount of money in cryptocurrency that was the main ransom paid to DarkSide, the criminal group behind the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline, the country's most significant fuel pipeline.
The investigators have recovered 63.7 Bitcoins, currently valued at approximately $2.3 million, the DoJ stated in a statement.
“Ransom payments will be the energy that propels the digital extortion engine … [the seizure] demonstrates that the US will use all available equipment to create these attacks more costly and less successful for criminal enterprises,” Lisa Monaco, DoJ’s deputy lawyer general, said.
“We will continue steadily to target the entire ransomware ecosystem to disrupt and deter these episodes … [it] demonstrate[s] the worthiness of early on notification to police, we thank Colonial Pipeline for quickly notifying the FBI if they learned that they were targeted by DarkSide,” she added.
Colonial, which suffered a major cyber assault that caused energy shortages and price rises across the US previous month, reported the incident to the FBI and paid a ransom of practically 75 Bitcoins to regain control of its systems.
“We will continue steadily to use our available means and leverage our domestic and intercontinental partnerships to disrupt ransomware attacks and protect our private sector companions and the American general public,” FBI deputy director Paul Abbate explained.
Joseph Blount, chief executive of Colonial Pipeline, told the Wall structure Road Journal that he approved the ransom payment because his employees did not understand how badly the attack had breached the devices and how prolonged would it try deliver the pipeline back action.
Following a attack, DarkSide reportedly shut down its operations due to “pressure” from the US government.
The group’s name-and-shame blog, ransom collection website and content delivery network, or CDN, were seized while funds from their cryptocurrency wallets were used in unidentified accounts by unidentified entities, DarkSide said in a message shared on several cyber crime forums and hacking websites.
Industry experts said cyber episodes on strength infrastructure are usually politically or financially motivated.
“Cyber criminals are employing a lot more elaborate schemes to convert technology into equipment of digital extortion,” Stephanie Hinds, acting US lawyer for the Northern District of California, said.
“We need to continue increasing the cyber resiliency of our critical infrastructure over the nation … we may also continue developing advanced solutions to improve our capability to monitor and recover digital ransom repayments.”
Source: www.thenationalnews.com
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