US Federal Officials Recover Part of BTC Paid by Colonial Pipeline in Ransomware Attack

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The US Department of Justice announced yesterday that the FBI has recovered part of the Bitcoins that Colonial Pipeline paid to the hackers that froze its systems last month.

According to the US authorities, the FBI has been able to recover $2.3 million, which is more than half the sum they paid ($4.4 million) to the hackers to regain access to their systems.

The FBI has managed to do so by tracking with the help of a block explorer the Bitcoin Colonial sent to Darkside across several transactions.

Remember that last month hacker group DarkSide reportedly froze the company’s payments systems and asked for a BTC payment to give the company access to its systems again.

The attack to such a big company has made the US authorities rethink how it addresses ransomware attacks. The company was forced to suspend fuel transportation across the East Coast of the US.

As a result, these type of events are now treated with the same priority as terrorist attacks.