[ad_1]
According to a press release from the US Department of Justice, the FBI has seized 63.7 BTC which allegedly represents the proceeds of a ransom payment provided by Colonial Pipeline to the hacking group DarkSide.
“There is no place beyond the FBI’s reach to hide illicit funds that will prevent us from imposing risks and consequences on malicious cyber actors,” FBI Deputy Director Paul Abate said in the statement. “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.”
Acting United States Attorney for the Northern District of California, Stephanie Hinds, also commented on the takeover, highlighting the need to “continue to improve the cyber resilience” of critical infrastructure across the country. It added that advanced methods will continue to be developed to improve “the ability of authorities to track and recover digital ransom payments.”
The seized 63.7 bitcoins allegedly represented part of a ransom payment made by Colonial Pipeline, the largest refined petroleum products pipeline system in the United States, after the company fell victim to a ransomware attack authored by hacking group DarkSide.
Ransomware is a type of computer malware that hijacks and encrypts the victim’s data and demands a ransom payment to get it back. The attack forced Colonial to shut down the entire pipeline, halting distribution services to several US states and driving up gas prices across the country.
Upon noticing that the company’s systems were under attack, the colonel immediately informed the FBI and told them to pay the ransom to DarkSide. According to an affidavit in support of the seizure, the FBI analyzed the Bitcoin blockchain and deduced the path taken by the ransom payment by inference of the transaction graph.
The bureau was then allegedly able to determine that 63.7 BTC from the ransom payment had been transferred to a specific address, the key to which the FBI had, and thus, could spend – or in this case seize – that money.
The affidavit did not say how the FBI could control the private keys of the address used by DarkSide, and it is not clear how that would be possible, given the nature of Bitcoin’s resistance to censorship. One possibility is that the address could be in a custodian wallet, thus facilitating control. Another possible scenario is money being stored in an unencrypted wallet – which is vulnerable to theft. Finally, the FBI could use the digital forensics on the wallet to retrieve sensitive information remotely.
According to a tweet from Blockstream CEO Adam Buck, the FBI has obtained a subpoena granting access to a rented cloud server used by hackers, allowing it to seize bitcoin.
.
[ad_2]
Picture Credit!