FBI withdraws most of the bitcoins paid to ransomware hackers

The U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had successfully recovered 63.7 BTC, or 85% of the 75 BTC ransom paid in Bitcoin, following a ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline, a U.S. oil pipeline company in May.

The U.S. Department of Justice tracked various transactions related to ransom when the FBI obtained a secret key used by a criminal group claiming to be a self-proclaimed apolitical organization called Darkside. They took legal action against an exchange with servers in Northern California to access the wallet, found the ransom, and successfully confiscated it. It is not known how the FBI obtained the secret key.

The attack on the Colonial Pipeline put the eastern and southern regions of the United States temporarily short of fuel, and as a move forward, President Biden and the US Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration (TSA) have mandated that all pipeline companies in the US install cybersecurity countermeasures guidelines. . Pipeline companies are therefore required to deploy 24/7 cybersecurity personnel and report any potential issues, including potential issues, to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

You might think that Bitcoin is difficult to track, but transaction information is traceable because it leaves a record. However, as the secret key is required for tracking, the FBI obtained the secret key this time as the key to recovering the ransom.

On the other hand, Darkseid announced on May 17 that its crypto assets had been transferred to an unknown account by someone and declared a cessation of activity.

The FBI said, “There is no place beyond the reach of the FBI where malicious cyber attackers hide illegal funds,” the FBI said.

However, shortly after the successful execution of the ransom note was announced, the price of Bitcoin plummeted around 00:00 on June 9, reducing 1 BTC to $32,000 at one time. Not only that, the price of other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and XRP also fell by 7-8%. According to the report, the news that the FBI obtained the secret key and confiscated the bitcoin caused the safety of crypto assets to be shaken, and it is assumed that this was reflected in the bitcoin price.

Of course, if you look at just one Colonial Pipeline, the US government has succeeded in recovering the ransom, but the ransomware attacks on pipeline-related companies show no signs of stopping, and LineStar Integrity Services (LIS) also steals 70GB of internal files from hackers and reveals them on the dark web. The incident is happening.

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