The United States (US) government on Thursday (04/11) announced it would reward $10 million or more than Rp. This is the country's latest attempt to stop DarkSide's cyber extortion attacks. Washington accuses them of being behind the shutdown of the country's main oil pipeline in May 2021. The Deputy Attorney General, Lisa Monaco, said that "in the coming days and weeks, you will see more arrests," more seizures of ransom money from hackers and additional law enforcement operations.
"If you target us, we will target you," Monaco said in an interview with the AP news agency this week. He declined to say specifically who might face prosecution. Lisa Monaco's current position has made her a key player in the US government's fight against ransomware. There are additional prizes In addition to rewards for information that could arrest hacker group leaders, the State Department is also offering up to $5 million for information that could lead to the arrest or conviction of anyone, in any country, who attempts to participate. in the DarkSide ransomware incident. "By offering this gift, the United States is demonstrating its commitment to protecting ransomware victims around the world from exploitation by cybercriminals," the State Department said in a statement. The FBI says DarkSide is based in Russia and responsible for a cyberattack in May that paralyzed the Colonial Pipeline oil and gas pipeline. The outage of the pipeline resulted in days of closure of gas stations in the US and led to rising gas prices and fuel shortages in some parts. Despite the tempting amount of rewards, not all cybersecurity experts believe that these rewards will be effective in uncovering hackers. Cyber crime is on the rise Colonial Pipeline said it paid hackers nearly $5 million in Bitcoin to regain access to their systems. In June, the US Department of Justice managed to recover about $2.3 million (approximately Rp. 32.9 billion) of the ransom. Earlier, the world's largest meat processing company, JBS, said in June that it had paid $11 million after it was hacked by a Russian group known as REvil. The most recent data released this month showed that US authorities received reports of payments related to ransomware totaling about $590 million in the first half of 2021. That's 42% higher than the total number of payments disclosed for the year 2020, the U.S. Treasury Department report said. It is believed that the actual cost could be in the billions of US dollars. Cyber extortion is carried out by hackers involving breaking into corporate or institutional networks, often through phishing or other scams. Cybercriminals encrypt critical company data and demand ransoms paid in cryptocurrencies in exchange for digital keys for companies to regain access to their data. Companies and institutions often face dilemmas and pressure from hackers to pay money to have their data re-opened.
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