Bitcoin worth $1,436 billion has been paid to hackers over the past six years, according to the FBI. Cointelegraph reported how ransomware took control and how FBI taking back control.
Joel DiCapua, the FBI’s special agent director who participated in the RSA Conference 2020 in San Francisco on Monday (local time), presented the Feds Fighting Ransomware: How the FBI Investigates and How You Can Help.
There, he explained how hackers mined $1,436 billion worth of bitcoin between October 1 2013 to November 7 2019. The RSA conference is the world’s largest annual information security event in the United States.
Joel DiCapua explained that ransomware has grown into one of the hacker’s new business tools. Further he explained, “Hacker received payments to recover from the ransomware victim. Creating a single ransomware and spraying the derived strain on global websites.”
Ransomware is a combination of ransomware and software, which encrypts and disables the use of files stored on your PC. In order to unlock the code, a hacker must pay money and receive a decryption key.
The biggest bitcoin hackers in history
According to the FBI, the most damaging ransomware so far is Ryuk Ransomware. North Korean hacker organization Lazarus developed this ransomware and it was operating from China.
They captured $61.26 million in ransom from companies around the world between 2018 and 2019. Crysis/Dharma Lansomware and Bitpaymer Ransomware followed behind. Each has received $24.48 million and $8.04 million respectively.
DiCapua continued explaining, that the bitcoin paid to hackers through ransomware then they laundered through cryptocurrency exchanges around the world.
Earlier this day, Australia cybersecurity minister has stated that 2019 the country faced a “ransomware epidemic”.
Meanwhile, recently a cyber hacker has attack South Korean cryptocurrency, Upbit. From the attack, Upbit has to face a huge lost as $50 million worth of Ethereum gone from the users’ wallet. The company detected that hackers had moved the Ethereum to a foreign wallet.