U.S. recovered $2.8 million worth of cryptos as a ransom to Colonial Pipeline attackers

Justice Department yesterday officially announced the seizure of 63.7 bitcoins worth about $ 2.3 million as part of the ransom payment against the Colonial Pipeline Ransomware Attack. According to the officials who reportedly paid a ransom to individuals belonging to a group referred to as the DarkSide maliciously targeted the Colonial Pipelines and caused massive damage to the critical infrastructure of the age-long pipeline. An arrest order was approved today by the Honorable Laurel Bearer, a judge in Northern California.

>“Following the money remains one of the most basic yet powerful tools we have,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco for the U.S. Department of Justice. “Ransom payments are the fuel that propels the digital extortion engine, and today’s announcement demonstrates that the United States will use all available tools to make these attacks more costly and less profitable for criminal enterprises. We will continue to target the entire ransomware ecosystem to disrupt and deter these attacks. Today’s announcements also demonstrate the value of early notification to law enforcement; we thank Colonial Pipeline for quickly notifying the FBI when they learned that DarkSide targeted them.

“There is no place beyond the reach of the FBI to conceal illicit funds that will prevent us from imposing risk and consequences upon malicious cyber actors,” said FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate. “We will continue to use all of our available resources and leverage our domestic and international partnerships to disrupt ransomware attacks and protect our private sector partners and the American public.”

“Cybercriminals are employing ever more elaborate schemes to convert technology into tools of digital extortion,” said Acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California, Stephanie Hinds.

>“We need to continue improving the cyber resiliency of our critical infrastructure across the nation, including in the Northern District of California. We will also continue developing advanced methods to improve our ability to track and recover digital ransom payments.”

An FBI agent said Darkside ransomware groups tracked ransom from multiple bitcoin addresses when transferring funds. They managed to confiscate the decentralized financial assets after gaining access to the private key of those highly secure crypto wallet accounts, which served as the account's password. It is unclear if the FBI obtained the private key of the dark side gang or from a third party. Then pass it on to the investigators. On the 14th of last month, a week after the attack on the Colonial Pipeline, it was reported that the DarkSide gang had lost control of their servers and Bitcoin Cash.

The Office of the Special Attorney and the Northern California County Foreclosure Office are handling foreclosures with the strong support of the Department of Money Laundering and Recovery and Computer Crime Division of the Department of Justice in the U.S.

The intellectual property sector pits information against national security and export controls. The several departments that worked with these seizures coordinated their efforts through the Ransomware Task Force and the Digital Ransomware Task Force, which were created to combat the rise in ransomware and digital ransomware attacks.

U.S. recovered $2.8 million worth of cryptos as a ransom to Colonial Pipeline attackers

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