Live Updates: Majority of Colonial Pipeline Ransom Recovered, Justice Dept. Says
“Earlier today, the Department of Justice has found and recaptured the majority of the ransom Colonial paid to the DarkSide network,” the deputy attorney general said Monday. Vice President Kamala Harris, in Guatemala, discussed efforts to curb migration.
The Justice Department said on Monday that it had recovered much of the ransom paid to hackers last month who shut down the computer systems of Colonial Pipeline, a critical pipeline operator.
Colonial had paid a ransom worth roughly $4.4 million in Bitcoin to the Russian hacking group DarkSide after it used ransomware, a form of malicious software, to hold up the company’s business networks in May. That payment cleared the way for Colonial to resume pumping fuel through its pipeline, which stretches from Texas to New Jersey and accounts for nearly half of all transport fuels that flow up the East Coast.
The seizure on Monday marked a first-of-its-kind effort by a new Justice Department task force to hijack a cybercriminal group’s profits through a hack of its Bitcoin wallet. The Justice Department said that it had seized 63.7 Bitcoins, currently valued at about $2.3 million. (The value of a Bitcoin has dropped over the past month.)
