The USA succeeded and got back part of the $5 million ransom they had paid to the DarkSide team for the Colonial Pipeline ransomware
On May 7, the company Colonial Pipeline which was responsible for supplying fuel to the east coast of America, suffered a ransomware attack from the DarkSide group. They were forced to shut down the fuel supply pipeline resulting in the US East Coast market to cause panic from possible shortage of fossil fuels.
Due to the criticality of the situation The Biden government paid $ 5 million to ransomware group DarkSide, as a ransom, to obtain the decryption key and quickly restore their systems to thenetwork. After Colonial Pipelife's systems were restored, US agencies launched a witch hunt against the DarkSide group, forcing the latter to shut down its website.
It appears that hunt has borne some fruit, as the US Department of Justice announced today that it has seized a digital wallet which was used by DarkSide and which contained part of the Colonial Pipeline ransom. Specifically, An FBI agent filed a lawsuit in a California court, claiming to have acquired a private key to a DarkSide digital wallet containing 63,7 Bitcoins.
Do not look at 63,7 Bitcoins. At $ 32.850 per bitcoin today, that equates to about $ 2.100.000. And the price of the cryptocurrency has fallen in the international market in relation to the date of payment of the ransom.
It is not clear how the FBI gained access to DarkSide's wallet, but on May 14, the ransomware gang claimed to have lost access to one of its servers.
This is the first time (at least officially) that the US government has stated that it has recovered part of the ransom it has paid. It is interesting to see the tightness of the underground routes, as well as the bitcoin system, in the war between the USA and DarkSide. Can anyone who knows the way and can, be hidden from the government of a large country?