I'm not reading how the private key for the wallet was obtained. Anyone?
DOJ seizes $2.3M in cryptocurrency paid to the ransomware extortionists Darkside
131–140 of 296 posts
Re: DOJ seizes $2.3M in cryptocurrency paid to the ransomware extortionists Darkside
#132This story makes absolutely no sense at all. The errors present by these hackers are so comical it's simply unbelievable. I'm supposed to believe some elite Russian hacking group keeps their crypto wallets running on a US host where the FBI just logs right in and snatches the private key? I'm starting to entertain the conspiracies that the future of commodities price manipulation is fake ransomware attacks. There nee…
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Re: DOJ seizes $2.3M in cryptocurrency paid to the ransomware extortionists Darkside
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US Judicial system which tries to flex its "unlimited" reach.
I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that their reach kind of is. If sanctioned the US government could almost certainly 51% attack any given crypto and redirect funds to whoever they want. This isn’t what happened but it’s laughable to think the US government isn’t capable of tracking down the account and seizing coins.
I doubt they could 51% Bitcoin with any sort of haste. Perhaps with a few year plan. Simply put it’s a procurement issue. There are limited ASICS and they are distributed among many operators, mostly foreign. There aren’t massive ASIC stockpiles in the US just waiting to be purchased. A government 51% attack would probably involve doing a private chip run.
Re: DOJ seizes $2.3M in cryptocurrency paid to the ransomware extortionists Darkside
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
I think tumblers can be traced if they are backfired or monitored. Though perhaps that requires more assumptions than the fact that they were incompetent and didn’t use any.
It says this 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
That seems to imply that they didn't use a mixer.
Re: DOJ seizes $2.3M in cryptocurrency paid to the ransomware extortionists Darkside
#135Re: DOJ seizes $2.3M in cryptocurrency paid to the ransomware extortionists Darkside
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much sophistication does it take to attack a computer system running software that hasn’t been patched in years?
Many so called "professionals" are still running operations with 5+ year old distributions that haven't been patched in almost as many years, and servers that people are afraid to reboot. I was once contracted by a company that was literally afraid to have any employees reboot a server because they had no idea how it worked, if it would come back up, and what to do if something didn't restart. They wanted an outside…
Would’ve been a decent opportunity to contract a job paid half up front.
Re: DOJ seizes $2.3M in cryptocurrency paid to the ransomware extortionists Darkside
#137This story makes absolutely no sense at all. The errors present by these hackers are so comical it's simply unbelievable. I'm supposed to believe some elite Russian hacking group keeps their crypto wallets running on a US host where the FBI just logs right in and snatches the private key? I'm starting to entertain the conspiracies that the future of commodities price manipulation is fake ransomware attacks. There nee…
> I'm supposed to believe some elite Russian hacking group keeps their crypto wallets running on a US host where the FBI just logs right in and snatches the private key?
What is it that's so implausible? That's just one possible interpretation. I see many possibilities here. Below are some, where "The FBI" loosely refers to the bureau, collaborating agencies and their partners and contractors:
* The FBI has (through active exploitation of hosts/services) gained access to a large number of BTC private keys, which they can utilize if and when they become a point of interest
* The FBI has some channel to index and get access to cryptocurrency wallets/private keys from hosts running on cooperating service providers such as GCP, AWS and Azure.
* The FBI continuously monitors for BTC addresses/public keys and opportunistically bruteforces them looking for weak keys, keeping a catalogue of broken ones and waiting until they become a point of interest
* These coins were sent through some anonymization network/protocol/service and the wallet in question actually has no relationship to the hack at all but just belonged to some clueless user.
I have already been assuming all of the above to be going on and this particular instance could be a result of either.
There is also the more boring explanation that these 64 something BTC was supposedly "tumbled" but not enough, transferred to a centralized exchange and subsequently frozen. It's also important to remember that it's not a single group/entity responsible for the whole chain here. Darkside provides the software and affiliate program, and maybe some servers. The attacks themselves are performed by "partners" (who just pay for access and could be anyone anywhere). Most likely the wallet here was not under control of Darkside ("The Russan elite hacker group") themselves but some affiliate who could be anything from a "lucky" clueless script kiddie and an actual professional who made one stupid mistake along the way.
Re: DOJ seizes $2.3M in cryptocurrency paid to the ransomware extortionists Darkside
#138This story makes absolutely no sense at all. The errors present by these hackers are so comical it's simply unbelievable. I'm supposed to believe some elite Russian hacking group keeps their crypto wallets running on a US host where the FBI just logs right in and snatches the private key? I'm starting to entertain the conspiracies that the future of commodities price manipulation is fake ransomware attacks. There nee…
People overestimate criminals. The ones that get caught, especially. What would you do if you were a foreign intelligence service? Participate in attacks yourself? No! You would drop hints and supply tools sideways to sloppy groups of idiots enabling them to be destructive, maybe acquiring some funds, and keeping your hands as clean as possible. Then when it comes out that "elite russian hackers" were incompetent idi…
hacker gangs can make tens of millions dollars. No security consultant makes that much.
Re: DOJ seizes $2.3M in cryptocurrency paid to the ransomware extortionists Darkside
#139The most interesting and unknown question is how the DOJ/FBI came to be in possession of the private key.
Couldn't they just have an informant give them the seed phrase?
Re: DOJ seizes $2.3M in cryptocurrency paid to the ransomware extortionists Darkside
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US Judicial system which tries to flex its "unlimited" reach.
I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that their reach kind of is. If sanctioned the US government could almost certainly 51% attack any given crypto and redirect funds to whoever they want. This isn’t what happened but it’s laughable to think the US government isn’t capable of tracking down the account and seizing coins.
then the hackers would just send a little bit at a time in case it gets intercepted