Ransom recoveryThe Justice Department said yesterday that it had traced and seized much of the ransom that a major U.S. pipeline operator paid to a Russian hacking collective last month. The ransomware attack shut down the Colonial Pipeline for about a week, prompting fuel shortages and price spikes, until the company paid hackers more than $4 million worth of Bitcoin. task force had recaptured most of the Bitcoins by, in essence, hacking the hackers. The hackers moved the ransom through dozens of anonymous accounts, which can be tracked on the blockchain, the public ledger of all Bitcoin transactions. Jeff Bezos, for instance, paid no income tax in 2007 through a bevy of investments and deductions.

Source: International New York Times June 08, 2021 11:26 UTC