Tuesday, November 5

DarkSide, Colonial Pipeline hackers collected close to $ 5 million in bitcoins as a ransom and could not confiscate it


Although the hijackers of the pipeline system claim that they lost access to their servers and their bitcoins, analysts who tracked their wallets claim that assets were removed on time

DarkSide, los hackers de Colonial Pipeline cobraron cerca de $5 millones de dólares en bitcoins como rescate y no pudieron confiscárselos
The Colonial Pipeline hackers received a reward and the saved from being confiscated.

Photo: Photo by LOGAN CYRUS / / AFP / Getty Images

Alexandra Liendo

The group of Darkside hackers who claimed the sabotage of the important “Colonial Pipeline” oil pipeline in the United States would have received as a payment the amount close to $ 5 million in bitcoins for the firm to obtain the necessary decryption tools to unlock the computer system of the largest fuel pipeline in the country.

After this, DarkSide made reports about the loss of access to the servers of its program and therefore to its cryptocurrency reserves . Service from which hackers paid other affiliates who used their ransonware (malware) to hack other victims. However,

it was known that before losing access DarkSide moved a large part of its assets to avoid being confiscated.

However, there are no official sources other than notifications on networks from the hackers themselves. Therefore, it is not possible to verify if they actually lost the payment or recovered it. Experts indicate that they removed it before there was an attempted confiscation.

Colonial, after being hacked and suffering an interruption of fuel service in almost the entire east coast of United States, it could be reactivated in less than 24 hours. AND hackers reported in various ways that one of their cryptocurrency wallets had been confiscated.

In this sense , analysis firm Elliptic, based on its blockchain studies, managed to identify DarkSide’s bitcoin wallet that he uses for ransom payments from his victims and ensured that the wallet received payment from 75 BTC, worth approximately $ 4.4 million in the moment of the transaction carried out by Colonial Pipeline on May 8, the day of the cyber attack.

It was also identified that the hackers’ wallet had received more than 60 payments from at least 20 different portfolios. One of the payments, other than that from Colonial Pipeline, came from from a chemical products distributor called Brentagg, also in BTC and for more than three million dollars.

For its part, the government of President Joe Biden did not comment on any payment, however, it has announced that it is working on a decree to better work and defend against future cyberattacks. Of course, one of the attacks that any government fears the most is that of its financial system, that is why they constantly work to prevent them.

This cyberattack had a great significance adored by the great consequences it could have, the Colonial Pipeline carries more than 100 million gallons of fuel per day to the entire East Coast of the United States and the Gulf Coast.

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