The FBI recovered a huge chunk of the Colonial Pipeline ransom by secretly gaining access to Darkside’s bitcoin wallet password

Recovered a vast majority of the ransom paid by Colonial Pipeline to hackers that closed down its operations a month and triggered enormous gas shortages and price increases.

The DOJ stated that it had regained $2.3 million worth of

How did the authorities pull it off?

ACCORDING TO THE DOJ, the FBI had what was the password into a bitcoin Wallet which Darkside had shipped the ransom money to, permitting the FBI to only grab the capital.

Even with cybercriminals’ increasingly complex technology usage to perpetrate crimes, the DOJ said it utilized a time-tested strategy to regain Colonial’s ransom payment.

On May 8, using its operations felt offline and amid an Colonial advised the FBI, which Darkside had taught it, to Send 75 bitcoin, a value roughly $4.3 million at the moment, based on an affidavit in an FBI special agent involved in this analysis.

The FBI representative then utilized a blockchain explorer software That lets users look for a blockchain, such as bitcoin, to ascertain the quantity and destination of trades — to determine that Darkside had attempted to launder the money through different bitcoin addresses (like a bank account ), as stated by the affidavit.

Managed to monitor 63.7 bitcoin into one speech that had received an influx of obligations on May 27.

The bureau had the personal key (efficiently the password) for this very address.

Bitcoin addresses rely upon a two-key encryption program for The general public key is shared publicly so anyone can send cash to this address. But when the sender has encoded their payment together with the receiver’s public key, only the receiver’s private key can decrypt and earn access to this cash.

That is why keys are meant to be carefully held Keys, kept in a safe location. As of January, $140 billion in bitcoin — approximately 20 percent of present bitcoins — were stored in pockets where individuals had lost or forgotten their personal keys.

In Darkside’s instance, the FBI was able to access its Public key; after obtaining a seizure warrant by a federal court, the bureau used the secret to get Darkside’s speech and swipe at 63.7 bitcoin, or about $2.3 million.

Said it delivered a warning to other possible Ransomware hackers

“Ransom payments would be the fuel that propels the electronic Extortion motor, and today’s announcement shows the United States Will utilize all available resources to create these attacks more expensive and less Rewarding for criminal ventures,” Monaco said in the discharge.

- Advertisement -
Avatar photo
Robert Scoble
Robert is the assistant managing editor for HC News, overseeing coverage of markets, companies, strategy and business leaders. Originally from Boston, Scoble began his journalism career in 1997 & now resides outside New York.

Latest articles

Related articles