The ransomware "epidemic" we’re experiencing is really just a slow moving, decentralized, cross-sector red teaming exercise that we have outsourced to the mob.
Pipeline Investigation Upends Idea That Bitcoin Is Untraceable
The F.B.I.’s recovery of Bitcoins paid in the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack showed cryptocurrencies are not as hard to track as it might seem.
Gas lines at Costco in Greensboro, N.C., last month during the shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline from a ransomware attack.Credit.Woody Marshall/News & Record, via Associated Press
June 9, 2021, 3:54 p.m. ET
When Bitcoin burst onto the scene in 2009, fans heralded the cryptocurrency as a secure, decentralized and anonymous way to conduct transactions outside the traditional financial system.
Criminals, often operating in hidden reaches of the internet, flocked to Bitcoin to do illicit business without revealing their names or locations. The digital currency quickly became as popular with drug dealers and tax evaders as it was with contrarian libertarians.
they just disclosed that darkside has been digitally stalking u.s. companies for the better part of last year, andy, and they more than 90 victims across various u.s. business structures. we just know about, you know, half a dozen, but there s been so many. the fbi would be my first call. why wouldn t a business call the fbi right away? well, i wish everybody had the same instincts that you do, alisyn. and i thought that deputy director abbate did a great job of taking us a little behind the curtain there to how significant a threat darkside is. i remember from my own time standing behind that podium that similar press conferences, not an easy thing to do, but most well, i wouldn t say most. many companies are afraid that going to law enforcement and exposing the breach or the attack or the ransomware will have a negative impact on their brand image, on their financial position, down the line. so, many companies approach these things from a perspective