New research by two leading scientists says some dire warnings of environmental damage from technology are overstated. From a report: The giant tech companies with their power-hungry, football-field-size data centers are not the environmental villains they are sometimes portrayed to be on social media and elsewhere. Shutting off your Zoom camera or throttling your Netflix service to lower-definition viewing does not yield a big saving in energy use, contrary to what some people have claimed. Even the predicted environmental impact of Bitcoin, which does require lots of computing firepower, has been considerably exaggerated by some researchers.

Those are the conclusions of a new analysis by Jonathan Koomey and Eric Masanet, two leading scientists in the field of technology, energy use and the environment. Both are former researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Mr. Koomey is now an independent analyst, and Mr. Masanet is a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. (Mr. Masanet receives research funding from Amazon.) They said their analysis, published earlier this month as a commentary article in Joule, a scientific journal, was not necessarily intended to be reassuring. Instead, they said, it is meant to inject a dose of reality into the public discussion of technology's impact on the environment. The surge in digital activity spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic, the scientists said, has fueled the debate and prompted dire warnings of environmental damage. They are concerned that wayward claims, often amplified by social media, could shape behavior and policy.

The Wall Street Journal reports: Authorities in the U.K. and Japan took aim at affiliates of Binance Holdings Ltd., the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange network, in the latest regulatory crackdown on the wildly popular trade in bitcoin and other digital assets. The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority, the country's lead financial regulator, told consumers Saturday that Binance's local unit wasn't permitted to conduct operations related to regulated financial activities...

Binance Markets Ltd., the company's U.K. arm, applied to be registered with the Financial Conduct Authority and withdrew its application on May 17. "A significantly high number of cryptoasset businesses are not meeting the required standards" under money-laundering regulations, said a spokesperson for the FCA in an email. "Of the firms we've assessed to date, over 90% have withdrawn applications following our intervention."

Japan's financial watchdog issued a statement on June 25, saying that Binance isn't registered to do business in the country...

As of April, Binance operated the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by trading volume, allowing tens of billions of dollars of trades to pass through its networks, according to data provider CryptoCompare. It was founded in 2017 and initially based in China, later moving offices to Japan and Malta. It recently said it is a decentralized organization with no headquarters... The FCA move doesn't ban customers from using Binance completely; U.K. customers can continue to use Binance's non-U.K. operations for activities the FCA doesn't directly regulate, such as buying and selling direct holdings in bitcoin.
The Financial Times called the move "one of the most significant moves any global regulator has made against Binance" and "a sign of how regulators are cracking down on the cryptocurrency industry over concerns relating to its potential role in illicit activities such as money laundering and fraud, and over often weak consumer protection." But more countries are also taking action, Reuters reports: Last month, Bloomberg reported that officials from the U.S. Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service who probe money laundering and tax offences had sought information from individuals with insight into Binance's business. In April, Germany's financial regulator BaFin warned the exchange risked being fined for offering digital tokens without an investor prospectus.
And CoinDesk adds: Binance is no longer open for business in Canada's most populous province, apparently choosing to close shop rather than meet the fate of other cryptocurrency exchanges that have had actions filed against them for allegedly failing to comply with Ontario securities laws.

Millions of Americans received stimulus checks in the past year, but Salvadoreans will be soon be receiving one paid in Bitcoin. From a report: The Central American country will give U.S. $30 worth of Bitcoin to each adult citizen that downloads and registers on the country's new cryptocurrency app, Chivo, President Nayib Bukele said during a televised speech Thursday. The $30 promotion is the nation's latest effort to push adoption of Bitcoin as legal currency. Bukele announced via video at the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami earlier this month that he would be introducing legislation to make Bitcoin legal tender. His "Bitcoin Law" goes into effect on Sept. 7.

"This law is made to generate employment, to generate investments, and at no moment will it affect anybody, like opponents have tried to say with their dirty campaign," Bukele said during the hour-long speech Thursday. Chivo, the crypto wallet whose name translates to "goat" in English, will be compatible with both dollars and Bitcoin, and will be available on both iOS and Android devices, Bukele said. Since former Salvadorean President Francisco Flores passed a 2001 dollarization law, the U.S. dollar has been the most used legal tender in the country.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Blockchain.com will let people use human-readable usernames in blockchain transactions thanks to a partnership with Unstoppable Domains. San Francisco-based Blockchain.com now supports Unstoppable Domains, a domain name provider for blockchains, which are the secure and transparent digital ledgers behind cryptocurrencies. That's a big deal because Blockchain.com is the world's largest crypto wallet provider, and people have been stumbling around with encoded names that are impossible to remember. And when people lose these names for their wallets or the passwords that go with them, they are often unable to recover their names. This particular deal won't help you with your passwords, but it does help with usernames. And that helps people send money to each other more easily, with fewer mistakes. Traditionally, sending Bitcoin, Ethereum, Doge, and other cryptocurrencies requires entering the recipient's 25- to 42-digit alphanumeric wallet address, said Matthew Gould, CEO of Unstoppable Domains, said in an interview with VentureBeat. If a person mistypes or miscopies a wallet address, those funds can be lost forever. Now, instead of "156i6HJfMWb1h2BEsKpfvZ2tQugqo4vs2w," users can simply type "[YourName].crypto" to send money to others or transfer it between accounts. "What is funny is this is a case of history repeating itself because we did the exact same thing with computer networks in the 90s, where the very first way to look up websites was actually using IP addresses," Gould said. "You actually had to remember long strings of numbers in order to find the very first content on the internet. And then they invented a naming service for those so that you could use .com names. It's a very similar thing."

A pair of South African brothers have vanished, along with Bitcoin worth $3.6 billion from their cryptocurrency investment platform. From a report: A Cape Town law firm hired by investors says they can't locate the brothers and has reported the matter to the Hawks, an elite unit of the national police force. It's also told crypto exchanges across the globe should any attempt be made to convert the digital coins. Following a surge in Bitcoin's value in the past year, the disappearance of about 69,000 coins -- worth more than $4 billion at their April peak -- would represent the biggest-ever dollar loss in a cryptocurrency scam. The incident could spur regulators' efforts to impose order on the market amid rising cases of fraud.

The first signs of trouble came in April, as Bitcoin was rocketing to a record. Africrypt Chief Operating Officer Ameer Cajee, the elder brother, informed clients that the company was the victim of a hack. He asked them not to report the incident to lawyers and authorities, as it would slow down the recovery process of the missing funds. Some skeptical investors roped in the law firm, Hanekom Attorneys, and a separate group started liquidation proceedings against Africrypt. "We were immediately suspicious as the announcement implored investors not to take legal action," Hanekom Attorneys said in response to emailed questions. "Africrypt employees lost access to the back-end platforms seven days before the alleged hack." The firm's investigation found Africrypt's pooled funds were transferred from its South African accounts and client wallets, and the coins went through tumblers and mixers -- or to other large pools of bitcoin -- to make them essentially untraceable.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: While bitcoin leaves a visible trail of transactions on its underlying blockchain, the niche "privacy coin" monero was designed to obscure the sender and receiver, as well as the amount exchanged. As a result, it has become an increasingly sought-after tool for criminals such as ransomware gangs, posing new problems for law enforcement. "We've seen ransomware groups specifically shifting to monero," said Bryce Webster-Jacobsen, director of intelligence at GroupSense, a cyber security group that has helped a growing number of victims pay out ransoms in monero. "[Cyber criminals] have recognized the ability for mistakes to be made using bitcoin that allow blockchain transactions to reveal their identity."

Russia-linked REvil, the notorious ransomware group believed to be behind the attack this month on meatpacker JBS, has removed the option of paying in bitcoin this year, demanding monero only, according to Brett Callow, threat analyst at Emsisoft. Meanwhile, both DarkSide, the group blamed for the Colonial Pipeline hack, and Babuk, which was behind the attack on Washington DC police this year, allow payments in either cryptocurrency but charge a 10 to 20 percent premium to victims paying in riskier bitcoin, experts say. Justin Ehrenhofer, a cryptocurrency compliance expert and member of the monero developer community, said that at the beginning of 2020, its use by ransomware gangs was "a rounding error." Today he estimates that about 10 to 20 percent of ransoms are paid in monero and that the figure will probably rise to 50 percent by the end of the year.

The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Neel Kashkari, took a jab at Dogecoin (DOGE) last week by referring to the memecoin as a Ponzi scheme, upping his rhetoric against cryptocurrencies. Cointelegraph reports: Kashkari's comments were in response to a LinkedIn poll by Paul Grewal, the chief legal officer and corporate secretary of Coinbase, who asked his connections about the proper way to pronounce "Doge." "The right pronunciation is pon-zi," Kashkari quipped.

This isn't the first time Kashkari has taken aim at cryptocurrencies. In February 2020, he said digital assets like Bitcoin (BTC) lack the basic tenants of a stable currency and praised the Securities and Exchange Commission for "cracking down" on initial coin offerings. Kashkari is not a member of this year's Federal Open Market Committee, the group responsible for setting United States monetary policy. The Minneapolis branch of the Fed will serve as an alternate FOMC member in 2022 before rotating back onto the committee as a voting member in 2023.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Bitcoin continued its dramatic plunge to $32,281 Monday morning, down 17.65% from a week earlier as some of China's largest bitcoin mining farms were shut down over the weekend. The bitcoin mining facilities of Sichuan Province received an order on Friday to stop doing business by Sunday, according to Chinese state media outlet the Global Times. The Sichuan Provincial Development and Reform Commission and the Sichuan Energy Bureau issued an order to all electricity companies in the region on Friday to stop supplying electricity to any known crypto mining organizations, including 26 firms that had already been publicly identified, according to the Global Times.

It seems that some local miners were optimistic that Sichuan's abundant hydroelectric energy would insulate the region from a cryptocurrency crackdown by authorities, but that optimism was obviously misplaced. "We had hoped that Sichuan would be an exception during the clampdown as there is an electricity glut there in the rainy season. But Chinese regulators are now taking a uniform approach, which would overhaul and rein in the booming Bitcoin mining industry in China," Shentu Qingchun, CEO of a Shenzhen crypto company told the Global Times. Videos on social media sites purported to show miners in Sichuan turning off their mining machines and packing up their businesses. Miners in China are now looking to sell their equipment overseas, and it appears many have already found buyers.

Bloomberg Businessweek describes what happened when an anonymous donor started "seeding" the tiny El Salvadoran surfing village of El Zonte (population: 3,000) with Bitcoin, turning it into the world's biggest Bitcoin experiment. Workers now receive their salaries and pay bills in Bitcoin, tourists can buy pupusas with a special Bitcoin payment app, and community projects are financed with Bitcoin donations. According to Jorge Valenzuela, an upbeat 32-year-old surfing aficionado who leads the volunteers, "it has changed my town...." [T]he most striking thing these days is the orange "B" — the international symbol for Bitcoin — splashed on garbage cans, near the entrance of the dirt-floor pizza joint, and hanging on the wall near the surf shack at the beachfront hotel. The town has never had a bank. Now the lone ATM buys and sells Bitcoin... In El Zonte, Bitcoin is a possible solution to an actual problem, as opposed to a solution in search of a problem, which is how critics describe its role in, say, the U.S...

But it was the pandemic that ultimately jump-started the project. When El Salvador's tourism industry and El Zonte's economy collapsed, Michael Peterson started making monthly transfers of about $35 in Bitcoin to 500 families around town [on behalf of an anonymous donor]. He used Wallet of Satoshi, one of the many existing smartphone apps created for small transactions using Bitcoin, which is notoriously impractical — expensive and slow — for everyday purchases. As more stores began asking how they could accept Bitcoin, Peterson decided El Zonte needed its own app. The Bitcoin Beach Wallet, which launched in September, similarly uses technology that allows for small transactions. It shows users how much they hold in Bitcoin and greenbacks and where they can spend it. Shops in town price everything in dollars, whether the underlying transaction is in Bitcoin or not. A cappuccino always costs $3.50, even if Bitcoin's value has just jumped or dropped. In this way, it behaves more like a token than a currency...

He says that 18 months after the project launched, roughly 90% of El Zonte's households are interacting with the currency regularly. "It's crazy how fast Bitcoin has caught on," he says. Businesses are using it on their own to pay bills and accept payments. Residents use transfers to the Strike app, the ATM, and peer-to-peer transactions to move money back and forth between Bitcoin and cash... Many business owners say it makes up just a small fraction of sales. Although some 85% of families have access to smartphones, many still live in cramped houses with dirt floors and tin roofs. But for others, it's clearly been life-altering. A construction crew chief pays his dozen or so employees in Bitcoin. He was sick of losing them for a half-day every month so they could travel to the nearest bank, an hourlong bus ride away, on payday...

El Zonte is among the longest-running experiments of its kind, but it's still largely untested. "I'd be very interested in seeing what happens if we enter a bear market," says McCormack, the British podcaster. "If you're a shop owner and you have $50 a day in Bitcoin sales and all the sudden that goes up to $60, that's cool. But what happens when it starts going down to $40 or $30?"

El Salvador has sought assistance from the World Bank as it implements its move to use bitcoin as a parallel legal tender alongside the U.S. dollar, Finance Minister Alejandro Zelaya said on Wednesday. From a report: Zelaya said the Central American country has tapped the World Bank for technical assistance on rules and implementation of bitcoin. Zelaya also said ongoing negotiations with the International Monetary Fund have been successful, though the Fund said last week it saw "macroeconomic, financial and legal issues" with the country's adoption of bitcoin. read more Zelaya said on Wednesday the IMF is "not against" the bitcoin implementation. Further reading: El Salvador saw bitcoin-based remittances rise 300% year over year in May.

"Within a decade, quantum computers could be powerful enough to break the cryptographic security that protects cell phones, bank accounts, email addresses and — yes — bitcoin wallets," writes CNBC.

But fortunately, that would happen only if we do nothing in the meantime, they're told by Thorsten Groetker, former Utimaco CTO "and one of the top experts in the field of quantum computing." Crypto experts told CNBC they aren't all that worried about quantum hacking of bitcoin wallets for a couple of different reasons. Castle Island Ventures founding partner Nic Carter pointed out that quantum breaks would be gradual rather than sudden. "We would have plenty of forewarning if quantum computing was reaching the stage of maturity and sophistication at which it started to threaten our core cryptographic primitives," he said. "It wouldn't be something that happens overnight."

There is also the fact that the community knows that it is coming, and researchers are already in the process of building quantum-safe cryptography. "The National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) has been working on a new standard for encryption for the future that's quantum-proof," said Fred Thiel, CEO of cryptocurrency mining specialist Marathon Digital Holdings. NIST is running that selection process now, picking the best candidates and standardizing them.

"It's a technical problem, and there's a technical solution for it," said Groetker. "There are new and secure algorithms for digital signatures. ... You will have years of time to migrate your funds from one account to another." Groetker said he expects the first standard quantum-safe crypto algorithm by 2024, which is still, as he put it, well before we'd see a quantum computer capable of breaking bitcoin's cryptography. Once a newly standardized post-quantum secure cryptography is built, Groetker said, the process of mass migration will begin. "Everyone who owns bitcoin or ethereum will transfer [their] funds from the digital identity that is secured with the old type of key, to a new wallet, or new account, that's secured with a new type of key, which is going to be secure," he said.
There will still be the problem of users who forget their password or died without sharing their key.

But in those scenarios, CNBC suggests, "an organization could lock down all accounts still using the old type of cryptography and give owners some way to access it."

The New York Times argues that this week changed Bitcoin's reputation as "secure, decentralized and anonymous" (adding "Criminals, often operating in hidden reaches of the internet, flocked to Bitcoin to do illicit business without revealing their names or locations. The digital currency quickly became as popular with drug dealers and tax evaders as it was with contrarian libertarians.")

"But this week's revelation that federal officials had recovered most of the Bitcoin ransom paid in the recent Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack exposed a fundamental misconception about cryptocurrencies: They are not as hard to track as cybercriminals think..." [F]or the growing community of cryptocurrency enthusiasts and investors, the fact that federal investigators had tracked the ransom as it moved through at least 23 different electronic accounts belonging to DarkSide, the hacking collective, before accessing one account showed that law enforcement was growing along with the industry... The Bitcoin ledger can be viewed by anyone who is plugged into the blockchain. "It is digital bread crumbs," said Kathryn Haun, a former federal prosecutor and investor at venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. "There's a trail law enforcement can follow rather nicely." Haun added that the speed with which the Justice Department seized most of the ransom was "groundbreaking" precisely because of the hackers' use of cryptocurrency. In contrast, she said, getting records from banks often requires months or years of navigating paperwork and bureaucracy, especially when those banks are overseas...

Tracking down a user's transaction history was a matter of figuring out which public key they controlled, authorities said. Seizing the assets then required obtaining the private key, which is more difficult. It's unclear how federal agents were able to get DarkSide's private key. Justice Department spokesman Marc Raimondi declined to say more about how the F.B.I. seized DarkSide's private key. According to court documents, investigators accessed the password for one of the hackers' Bitcoin wallets, though they did not detail how. The F.B.I. did not appear to rely on any underlying vulnerability in blockchain technology, cryptocurrency experts said. The likelier culprit was good old-fashioned police work. Federal agents could have seized DarkSide's private keys by planting a human spy inside DarkSide's network, hacking the computers where their private keys and passwords were stored, or compelling the service that holds their private wallet to turn them over via search warrant or other means. "If they can get their hands on the keys, it's seizable," said Jesse Proudman, founder of Makara, a cryptocurrency investment site. "Just putting it on a blockchain doesn't absolve that fact...."

The F.B.I. has partnered with several companies that specialize in tracking cryptocurrencies across digital accounts, according to officials, court documents and the companies. Start-ups with names like TRM Labs, Elliptic and Chainalysis that trace cryptocurrency payments and flag possible criminal activity have blossomed as law enforcement agencies and banks try to get ahead of financial crime. Their technology traces blockchains looking for patterns that suggest illegal activity... "Cryptocurrency allows us to use these tools to trace funds and financial flows along the blockchain in ways that we could never do with cash," said Ari Redbord, the head of legal affairs at TRM Labs, a blockchain intelligence company that sells its analytic software to law enforcement and banks. He was previously a senior adviser on financial intelligence and terrorism at the Treasury Department.
The story includes three intriguing quotes:

• Justice Department spokesman Marc Raimondi said the Colonial Pipeline ransom seizure was only the latest of "many seizures, in the hundreds of millions of dollars, from unhosted cryptocurrency wallets" used for criminal activity.
• Hunter Horsley, chief executive of cryptocurrency investment company Bitwise Asset Management, said "The public is slowly being shown, in case after case, that Bitcoin is good for law enforcement and bad for crime — the opposite of what many historically believed."
• A spokesperson for Chainalysis, a start-up that traces cryptocurrency payments, tells the Times that in the end, "cryptocurrencies are actually more transparent than most other forms of value transfer. Certainly more transparent than cash."

From today's edition of Mike Melanson's "This Week in Programming" column: This week, Docker announced some changes to Docker Hub Autobuilds — the primary one of interest being that autobuilds would no longer be available to free tier users — and much of the internet let out a collective groan to the tune of "this is why we can't have nice things...!"

"As many of you are aware, it has been a difficult period for companies offering free cloud compute," wrote Shaun Mulligan, principal product manager at Docker in the company's blog post, citing an article that explores how crypto-mining gangs are running amok on free cloud computing platforms. Mulligan goes on to explain that Docker has "seen a massive growth in the number of bad actors," noting that it not only costs them money, but also degrades performance for their paying customers. And so, after seven years of free access to their autobuild feature, wherein even all of you non-paying Docker users could set up continuous integration for your containerized projects, gratis, the end is nigh. Like, really, really nigh, as in next week — June 18.

While Docker offered that they already tried to correct the issue by removing around 10,000 accounts, they say that the miners returned the next week in droves, and so they "made the hard choice to remove Autobuilds...." For its part, Docker has tried to again stave off the criticism, offering users a discount on subscriptions, and offering members of its open source program the ability to continue to use autobuilds for free...
Docker says they've also changed Autobuild "to take advantage of BuildKit by default for improved build performance," increased the number of parallel builds for subscribers, and increased the build instance types, "so you get a beefier machine to build on!" While the changes were apparently inspired by their struggles with cryptocurrency miners, "All of these improvements should see a faster and more stable build experience with lower queue times..."

"We really appreciate your support and the community's understanding as the whole industry battles against these abusive few."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Global regulators have said cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin should come with the toughest bank capital rules to avoid putting the wider financial system at risk should their value collapse suddenly. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, which consists of regulators from the world's leading financial centers, is proposing a "new conservative prudential treatment" for crypto-assets that would force banks to put aside enough capital to cover 100% of potential losses. That would be the highest capital requirement of any asset, illustrating that cryptocurrencies and related investments are seen as far more risky and volatile than conventional stocks or bonds.

The world's most powerful banking standards setter warned on Thursday that certain crypto-assets had proved to be highly volatile, meaning they could "present risks for banks as exposures increase, including liquidity risk; credit risk; market risk; operational risk (including fraud and cyber risks); money laundering/terrorist financing risk; and legal and reputation risks." However, it said looser rules could apply to stablecoins -- a new form of digital asset usually pegged to the value of a traditional currency -- that may require only a level of capital rules applied to traditional assets such as bonds, loans, deposits, equities or commodities. The committee's proposals, which will now go out for consultation, are meant to help protect the global financial system in case cryptocurrency prices plummet.

The International Monetary Fund said on Thursday it has a number of economic and legal concerns regarding the move from El Salvador to make bitcoin a parallel legal tender. Reuters reports: El Salvador has become the first country in the world to adopt bitcoin as legal tender, with President Nayib Bukele touting its use for its potential to help Salvadorans living abroad to send remittances back home. "Adoption of bitcoin as legal tender raises a number of macroeconomic, financial and legal issues that require very careful analysis," said Gerry Rice, an IMF spokesman, during a scheduled press briefing. "We are following developments closely, and we'll continue our consultations with the authorities." Rice said the Fund will later on Thursday meet with Bukele to discuss the bitcoin law. El Salvador is in discussions with the IMF seeking a near $1 billion program. Hours after his announcement, Bukele instructed the state-owned geothermal electric company "to put up a plan to offer facilities for Bitcoin mining with very cheap, 100% clean, 100% renewable, 0 emissions energy from our volcanos."

Americans got richer off bitcoin than any other country last year -- pocketing $4.1 billion in profits as the price of the volatile cryptocurrency soared to $29,000 from under $10,000, according to a new analysis. The New York Post reports: The US was followed by China, which cashed out some $1.1 billion in profits in 2020, according to data published Monday by blockchain firm Chainalysis. Japan came in third with $900 million, followed by the United Kingdom with $800 million and Russia with $600 million. The figures only cover realized gains, meaning that profits still held in cryptocurrencies or in exchange accounts are not included.

According to Chainalysis, Americans appear to have stepped up their bitcoin investments last year, despite nationwide lockdown orders and record unemployment. US crypto investors then cashed out toward the end of the year when the price of bitcoin has soared more than three times its $9,000 price tag. While cryptocurrency profits can be hard to track due to the currencies' intentionally decentralized nature, Chainalysis produced its estimate by collecting data including deposits, withdrawals and web traffic from cryptocurrency exchanges like Coinbase.

Hours after El Salvador became the first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender, the nation's president -- Nayib Bukele -- has announced that he has instructed the state-owned geothermal electric company "to put up a plan to offer facilities for Bitcoin mining with very cheap, 100% clean, 100% renewable, 0 emissions energy from our volcanos."

El Salvador has become the first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender. Lawmakers in the Central American country's Congress voted by a "supermajority" in favor of the Bitcoin Law, receiving 62 out of 84 of the legislature's vote. CNBC adds: "The purpose of this law is to regulate bitcoin as unrestricted legal tender with liberating power, unlimited in any transaction, and to any title that public or private natural or legal persons require carrying out," the law reads. Prices can now be shown in bitcoin, tax contributions can be paid with the digital currency, and exchanges in bitcoin will not be subject to capital gains tax.

US investigators have recovered millions of dollars in cryptocurrency paid in ransom to hackers whose attack prompted the shutdown of the key East Coast pipeline last month, CNN reported Monday, citing people briefed on the matter. From the report: The Justice Department on Monday is expected to announce details of the operation led by the FBI with the cooperation of the Colonial Pipeline operator, the people briefed on the matter said. The ransom recovery is a rare outcome for a company that has fallen victim to a debilitating cyberattack in the booming criminal business of ransomware. Colonial Pipeline Co. CEO Joseph Blount told The Wall Street Journal In an interview published last month that the company complied with the $4.4 million ransom demand because officials didn't know the extent of the intrusion by hackers and how long it would take to restore operations. But behind the scenes, the company had taken early steps to notify the FBI and followed instructions that helped investigators track the payment to a cryptocurrency wallet used by the hackers, believed to be based in Russia. US officials have linked the Colonial attack to a criminal hacking group known as Darkside that is said to share its malware tools with other criminal hackers. Update: Law-enforcement officials said they have seized nearly 64 bitcoin of 75 bitcoin in ransom paid.

Slashdot reader Charlotte Web summarizes a Department of Justice press release: The U.S. Department of Justice says "millions" of computers around the world were infected with the Trickbot malware, which was used "to harvest banking credentials and deliver ransomware."

In February they arrested a 55-year-old woman in Miami, Florida, saying she and her associates "are accused of infecting tens of millions of computers worldwide, in an effort to steal financial information to ultimately siphon off millions of dollars through compromised computer systems," according to Special Agent in Charge Eric B. Smith of the FBI's Cleveland Field Office. In October ZDNet was calling Trickbot "one of today's largest malware botnets and cybercrime operations."

Yesterday that woman — Alla Witte, aka "Max" — was arraigned in federal court in Cleveland, Ohio. According to the indictment, Witte worked as a malware developer for the Trickbot Group and wrote code related to the control, deployment, and payments of ransomware.

From the Department of Justice announcement:

The ransomware informed victims that their computer was encrypted, and that they would need to purchase special software through a Bitcoin address controlled by the Trickbot Group to decrypt their files. In addition, Witte allegedly provided code to the Trickbot Group that monitored and tracked authorized users of the malware and developed tools and protocols to store stolen login credentials... Witte and her co-conspirators allegedly worked together to infect victim computers with the Trickbot malware designed to capture online banking login credentials and harvest other personal information, including credit card numbers, emails, passwords, dates of birth, social security numbers and addresses. Witte and others also allegedly captured login credentials and other stolen personal information to gain access to online bank accounts, execute unauthorized electronic funds transfers and launder the money through U.S. and foreign beneficiary accounts...

If convicted, Witte faces a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison for conspiracy to commit wire and bank fraud; 30 years in prison for each substantive bank fraud count; a two-year mandatory sentence for each aggravated identity theft count, which must be served consecutively to any other sentence; and 20 years in prison for conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The indictment alleges that "beginning in November 2015, Witte and others stole money and confidential information from unsuspecting victims, including businesses and their financial institutions in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Spain, and Russia through the use of the Trickbot malware." The AP reports the group is now accused of targeting high-reward victims which included hospitals, schools, public utilities, and governments, as well as real estate and law firms and country clubs.

Interestingly, this case is part of the U.S. Department of Justice's "Ransomware and Digital Extortion Task Force," with its Criminal Division working with the U.S. Attorneys' Offices and prioritizing the disruption, investigation, and prosecution of ransomware "by tracking and dismantling the development and deployment of malware, identifying the cybercriminals responsible, and holding those individuals accountable for their crimes," according to the department's statement. "The department, through the Task Force, also strategically targets the ransomware criminal ecosystem as a whole and collaborates with domestic and foreign government agencies as well as private sector partners to combat this significant criminal threat."

"These charges serve as a warning to would-be cybercriminals," said Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco, "that the Department of Justice, through the Ransomware and Digital Extortion Task Force and alongside our partners, will use all the tools at our disposal to disrupt the cybercriminal ecosystem."