Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco
Well isn’t this interesting.
The Justice Department on Monday announced it seized most of the $4.3 million in Bitcoin (75 BTC) ransom Colonial Pipeline paid to hackers.
The largest US refinery shut two crude units in Port Arthur, Texas last month after hackers caused the Colonial Pipeline to shut down.
Colonial Pipeline paid $4.3 million in Bitcoin to the hackers before announcing it would restart its operations again.
The FBI said Monday during a presser the bureau was able to identify the Bitcoin wallet used by the DarkSide hackers and recover $2.26 million (63.7 BTC).
According to court documents, the FBI was able to identify the wallet through the blockchain public ledger.
“After Colonial Pipeline’s quick notification to law enforcement, and pursuant to a seizure warrant issued by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California earlier today, the Department of Justice has found and recaptured the majority of the ransom Colonial paid to the DarkSide network in the wake of last month’s ransomware attack,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said on Monday during a press conference.
“Today the FBI successfully seized criminal proceeds from a Bitcoin wallet that DarkSide ransomware actors used to collect a cyber ransom payment from a victim,” FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate said Monday.
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Last month London-based blockchain analysts at Elliptic reported DarkSide received $90 million in bitcoin over the last 9 months.
After identifying and analyzing the wallet used by DarkSide, Elliptic found that the hacker group received $90 million in bitcoin from a total of 47 distinct wallets.