| | | the thing about the ransom, presumably paid in either bitgold or monero, is that while most folks do not make the distinction between paid in 20 or 10 dollar bills but ordinarily msm should / would make a point about whether paid in dollars or pounds or euro or ...
in the instance of the 5M ransom the nyt notes that the payment was in bitgold nytimes.com
"The operator of a critical fuel pipeline on the East Coast paid extortionists roughly 75 Bitcoin — or nearly $5 million — to recover its stolen data, according to people briefed on the transaction, clearing the way for gas to begin flowing again but complicating President Biden’s efforts to deter future attacks."
... which, if true, tells us everything we need to know to conclude that the entire episode is made up bs, because ...
(1) for an allegedly sophisticate hack that a common fellow or ordinary fellowette would be hard-pressed to do, the cabal has been extremely naive about receiving the ransom, for should any one of the 75 bitcoins ever show show up in any wallet attached to any exchange on its way to be turned into fiat or some other crypto, the authorities would zoom-in on the receiving wallet / exchange and ask a simple question of the new owner, "from whom did you receive the coin? or part of a particular coin?"
(2) more interesting would have been had the ransom been paid in monero, where one only knows the sendee should the coins ever surface, but not the sender, and even if so, should anyone got a stack of moneros sent of the suspect hoard, a simple questioning of the sendee suffice.
(3) I do not know much about crypto payments so am not aware of any coin where we (the network) neither know the sendee no the sender.
(4) Would say the perps now have a problem, sitting on 5M that they cannot spend, unless of course they belong to a sanctioned group with authority over the investigators in FBI.
Let us see if the pipe line hacking story turns into one not about finding the perps, but of trying to outlaw BTC.
IOW, the story is very odd, as in suspicious, that it is an inside, sanctioned, and black ops job. |
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