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There are more technical details in the linked affidavit (page 6 and 7): https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1402056/downl... They kept following transactions on the blockchain, but it's not clear how the private key became in the posession of the FBI.
Can anyone here (hn) add anything?
It seems like steps in the investigation, or process to identifying the bad guys were left out.
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The warrant does not imply that the coins were on an exchange. The warrant only indicates that they needed legal authority to seize coins, wherever they are. It seem more likely that the FBI/NSA had and gained some access to the gang's infrastructure and seized the money. Transmitting ransom money to an exchange without any type of tumbler or atomic swapping, that it's not a realistic scenario. Maybe they tried to us…
Why not? Why would you assume an attacker uses all of the best cloaking tactics? This doesn't seem like a complex attack at all: monitor common 0 day vuln feeds, attack, install off the shelf ransomware sold by 5$. It might as well have been a script kiddie.
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As someone who has been on the receiving end of federal seizure orders for cryptocurrency private keys, they were in my case satisfied by publishing a transfer (signature) to a USG address, not actual disclosure of private key material, despite that being explicitly stated in the order.
This indicates a level of US Fed LEO technical sophistication I’m somewhat pleased to hear exists.
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I'm guessing the rest was fees/etc coming out of the crypto tumblers they used?
They didn't use any tumblers, that's how they got caught. edit: it says so in the article: As alleged in the supporting affidavit, by reviewing the Bitcoin public ledger, law enforcement was able to track multiple transfers of bitcoin and identify that approximately 63.7 bitcoins, representing the proceeds of the victim’s ransom payment, had been transferred to a specific address
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As someone who has been on the receiving end of federal seizure orders for cryptocurrency private keys, they were in my case satisfied by publishing a transfer (signature) to a USG address, not actual disclosure of private key material, despite that being explicitly stated in the order.
This indicates a level of US Fed LEO technical sophistication I’m somewhat pleased to hear exists.
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They send it to another wallet/account that they control. Not hard to understand.
And if they don't send? With electronically stored fiat, the feds can just ask the bank to give them the money right out of their account, and I'm sure the banks would cooperate. With paper cash they can just hold their arm while the SWAT team go on a rampage through their bedsheets for the cash. What does one do for Bitcoin, short of a hard fork?
Plausible theory on how they did this here: https://twitter.com/brucedkleinman/status/140204474591697305... tl;dr: The hackers used the same full node wallet more than once, and the FBI was able to narrow in on an IP address because the first relay of the transactions was the same across multiple transactions. This server was in California, which allowed the FBI to seize it.
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You find it improbable that geopolitical enemies tend to be the ones that attack us? Feels like saying "I find it weird that people I insult disproportionately punch me in the face".
I think you are assigning too much “us vs them” to the ransomware marketplace. With ransomware criminals, “us” is the attacker, and “them” is everyone with a computer who might pay. Political boundaries don’t factor in to it at all. It is by nature an anonymous attack, hence the term “ransom”. It is strange to me that almost all high-profile ransomware attacks that have been publicized in the US are claimed by the FB…
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In crypto „seizing” means getting access to the wallet and sending funds to the one that gov’t has under it’s sole control
How do they get access to the wallet, assuming the dude won't tell them? With fiat they can do it with force, that's the difference. If the dude won't tell them they have no way to get access to it, other than the $5 wrench.