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."

CNBC reports that El Salvador "is looking to introduce legislation that will make it the world's first sovereign nation to adopt bitcoin as legal tender, alongside the U.S. dollar." In a video broadcast to Bitcoin 2021, a multiday conference in Miami being billed as the biggest bitcoin event in history, President Nayib Bukele announced El Salvador's partnership with digital wallet company, Strike, to build the country's modern financial infrastructure using bitcoin technology.

Strike founder and CEO Jack Mallers said this will go down as the "shot heard 'round the world for bitcoin...."

Speaking from the mainstage, Mallers said the move will help unleash the power and potential of bitcoin for everyday use cases on an open network that benefits individuals, businesses, and public sector services... While details are still forthcoming about how the rollout will work, CNBC is told that El Salvador has assembled a team of bitcoin leaders to help build a new financial ecosystem with bitcoin as the base layer. "It was an inevitability, but here already: the first country on track to make bitcoin legal tender," said Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream.

On Wednesday, crews were putting the final touches on the Bitcoin 2021 Convention, the world's largest-ever crypto-currency conference to be held this weekend at the Mana Convention Center in Wynwood. CBS4 Miami reports: Miami's crypto conference is expected to draw 50,000 people. The convention runs from Friday, June 4 through June 6th. The conference places Miami firmly in the landscape as the new Silicon Valley. "Miami is becoming the new capital of capital. It's becoming an innovative hub. It's becoming a tier 1 city of venture capital and innovation," said Brock Pierce. "A lot of the best and the brightest from Silicon Valley and New York have moved their businesses and their firms here." And Brock Pierce should know. He's the chairman of Bitcoin Foundation who has "mined" his way through the crypto world. Oh and by the way, he's a billionaire. "Mayor [Francis Suarez] has done an incredible job of saying 'come here, Miami is the place.' As a result of it, this has become the most important city in the United States," Pierce says.

NortonLifelock has added the ability to mine Ethereum cryptocurrency directly within its Norton 360 antivirus program as a way to "protect" users from malicious mining software. BleepingComputer reports: This new mining feature is called 'Norton Crypto' and will be rolling out tomorrow to Norton 360 users enrolled in Norton's early adopter program. When Norton Crypto is enabled, the software will use the device's graphics card (GPU) to mine for Ethereum, which will then be transferred into a Norton wallet hosted in the cloud. It is not clear if every device running Norton Crypto is mining independently or as part of a pool of users for a greater chance of earning rewards of Ethereum.

As the difficulty of mining Ethereum by yourself is very high, Norton users will likely be pooled together for greater chances of mining a block. If Norton is operating a pool for this new feature, they may take a small fee of all mined Ethereum as is common among pool operators, making this new feature a revenue generator for the company. "As the crypto economy continues to become a more important part of our customers' lives, we want to empower them to mine cryptocurrency with Norton, a brand they trust," said Vincent Pilette, CEO of NortonLifeLock. "Norton Crypto is yet another innovative example of how we are expanding our Cyber Safety platform to protect our customers' ever-evolving digital lives."

An anonymous reader shares an opinion piece from Bloomberg, written by Timothy Massad: On Sept. 16, 2008, the day after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, the Reserve Primary Fund "broke the buck": Its net asset value fell below $1 per share. The fund -- often called the first money-market fund -- held $785 million of Lehman commercial paper that was suddenly worthless. Although the paper represented only 1.2% of the fund's total assets of $64.8 billion, demands for withdrawals escalated, and the fund lost two-thirds of its assets within 24 hours. This triggered a general run on money-market funds that stopped only when the U.S. Treasury issued an extraordinary guarantee of essentially all money-market fund liabilities. The episode underscored how important that $1 net asset value is to investors.

Certain cryptocurrencies known as stablecoins are today's economic equivalent of money-market funds, and in some cases their practices should have us worried that they could break the buck, creating significant damage in the broader crypto market. One such stablecoin is Tether. With a market capitalization close to $60 billion, it is almost as big as the Reserve Fund was in 2008. Each Tether token is pegged to be equivalent to $1. But, as with the Reserve Primary Fund, the true value of those tokens depends on the market value of Tether's reserves -- the portfolio of investments made with the fiat currency it receives.

Tether recently disclosed that as of March 31, only 8% of its assets were in cash, Treasury bills and "reverse repo notes." Almost 50% was in commercial paper, but no detail was provided about its quality. "Fiduciary deposits" represented 18%. Even more troubling: 10% of total assets were in "corporate bonds, funds & precious metals," almost 13% were in "secured loans (none to affiliated entities)," and the remainder in "other," which includes digital tokens. Tether separately provided a report from the accounting firm Moore Cayman stating that Tether's assets exceed "the amount required to redeem" outstanding tokens. But that report provided no description of assets. It appeared to be based solely on management's accounting, noting that Tether's policy is to use "historic cost," and that "the realizable value of these assets ... could be materially different." These facts should put holders of Tether -- and other stablecoins -- on notice that they may have trouble getting back $1 for each token. "If some of Tether's investments were to become worthless or decline in value, it would suffer the equivalent fate of breaking the buck," says Massad. "And if, for any reason, a wave of Tether holders suddenly tried to convert their tokens to cash, we do not know whether Tether could liquidate sufficient investments quickly to satisfy the demand."

"In the niche world of customers for high-end semiconductors, a bitter feud is pitting bitcoin miners against hardcore gamers," reports Quartz: At issue is the latest line of NVIDIA graphics cards — powerful, cutting-edge chips with the computational might to display the most advanced video game graphics on the market. Gamers want the chips so they can experience ultra-realistic lighting effects in their favorite games. But they can't get their hands on NVIDIA cards, because miners are buying them up and adapting them to crunch cryptographic codes and harvest digital currency. The fierce competition to buy chips — combined with a global semiconductor shortage — has driven resale prices up as much as 300%, and led hundreds of thousands of desperate consumers to sign up for daily raffles for the right to buy chips at a significant mark-up.

To broker a peace between its warring customers, NVIDIA is, essentially, splitting its cutting-edge graphics chips into two dumbed-down products: GeForce for gamers and the Cryptocurrency Mining Processor (CMP) for miners. GeForce is the latest NVIDIA graphics card — except key parts of it have been slowed down to make it less valuable for miners racing to solve crypto puzzles. CMP is based on a slightly older version of NVIDIA's graphics card which has been stripped of all of its display outputs, so gamers can't use it to render graphics.

NVIDIA's goal in splitting its product offerings is to incentivize miners to only buy CMP chips, and leave the GeForce chips for the gamers. "What we hope is that the CMPs will satisfy the miners...[and] steer our GeForce supply to gamers," said CEO Jansen Huang on a May 26 conference call with investors and analysts... It won't be easy to keep the miners at bay, however. NVIDIA tried releasing slowed-down graphics chips in February in an effort to deter miners from buying them, but it didn't work. The miners quickly figured out how to hack the chips and make them perform at full-speed again.

Iran banned bitcoin mining this week, after four months of continuous blackouts partially due to what officials say is a huge energy suck from illegal mining. Gizmodo reports: President Hassan Rouhani said at a cabinet meeting Wednesday that a drought in the region was responsible for crippling the country's supply of hydroelectric power. But, he said, the huge amount of illegal bitcoin mining that happens in Iran was tapping a staggering 2 gigawatts of power each day from the already-stressed grid. (Legal operations, meanwhile, used somewhere between 200 and 300 megawatts.)

Rouhani said around 85% of this 2-gigawatt power suck was from unlicensed operations. Iran has become a hotspot for illegal mining after many miners began to decamp there to take advantage of the country's heavily subsidized energy (partially due to the fact that Iran can't sell its oil due to international sanctions). Around 4.5% of the world's total bitcoin mining now takes place in Iran, making it one of the top 10 bitcoin-producing countries in the world. The crackdown by the government may knock it off the chart, but miners will surely sniff out another cheap source of electricity somewhere else in the world and set up shop there. [...] The ban in Iran will take effect immediately and be in place until at least September, officials say, and will include legal as well as illegal operations.
UPDATE: NBC News has additional converage — including these two interesting details:

• "Tehran allows cryptocurrencies mined in Iran to pay for imports of goods, which can help it get around the wide-ranging U.S. sanctions that had been imposed on the country..."
• "Around 4.5 percent of all bitcoin mining globally took place in Iran between January and April of this year, according to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic. That put it among the top 10 in the world, while China came in first place at nearly 70 percent."

phalse phace shares a report from the BBC: A suspected Bitcoin "mining" operation illegally stealing electricity has been found by police who were searching for a cannabis farm. Officers had been tipped off about the site on the Great Bridge Industrial Estate, Sandwell, and raided it on May 18, West Midlands Police said. Instead of cannabis plants they found a bank of about 100 computer units. The force said the cryptocurrency "mine" had effectively stolen thousands of pounds of electricity. Inquiries with network operator Western Power Distribution found an illegal connection to the electricity supply.

Detectives said they were tipped off about lots of people visiting the unit throughout the day and a police drone picked up a lot of heat coming from the building. Sgt Jennifer Griffin said, given the signs, they had expected to find a cannabis farm. "It had all the hallmarks of a cannabis cultivation set-up and I believe it is only the second such crypto mine we have encountered in the West Midlands," she said. The computer equipment has been seized but no arrests have been made, the force said.

GameStop has quietly unveiled a new web portal for a non-fungible token (NFT) platform. The Block reports: "We are building a team" the page declares, stating: "We welcome exceptional engineers (solidity, react, python), designers, gamers, marketers, and community leaders. If you want to join our team, send your profile or something you've built to: nfteam@gamestop.com."

The exact scope of the project is unclear, though prominently featured on the page is a link to an Ethereum address, indicating that GameStop's team will use Ethereum as a technology base. The smart contract code declares "Game On Anon" and links to GameStop's NFT page and indicates that potential GameStop-released NFTs will utilize Ethereum's ERC721 standard. The code also points to a dedicated token, GME.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Nation states are serving as safe havens for sophisticated criminal cyber actors and that is leading to an "increased blending of the threat," said John Demers, assistant attorney general at the National Security Division at the Department of Justice, speaking on a CNBC Evolve livestream on Wednesday. He said that is also a reason to believe that DarkSide could be back, or is still operating under a new name.

"When nation states aren't doing their part to investigate and root out hacking activity happening within their borders, then any number of things could have been the answer to ... what happened to the DarkSide infrastructure including that ... they're just off renaming themselves, so we'll see." "Groups like that will come back," he added. "Probably Darkside itself, those actors that comprise that group, will be back if they're not already out there in other forms operating as we're talking about."

Michael Orlando, acting director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said during the CNBC Evolve livestream that ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure rise to the level of national security threat and the "safe haven" aspect is one part of the cybersecurity riddle the government and business world will have to counteract. "We do know that countries like Russia and China, Iran and others certainly create safe havens for criminal hackers as long as they don't conduct attacks against them. But that's a challenge for us that we're going to have to work through as we figure out how to counter ransomware attacks." DarkSide received a total of $90 million in bitcoin ransom payments before shutting down. The hacker group coincidentally lost control of its web servers and some of the funds the day after President Joe Biden announced plans to disrupt the hackers.

A new Bitcoin Mining Council has been created to improve the crypto-currency's sustainability, following a meeting of "leading" Bitcoin miners and Elon Musk. The BBC reports: It's hoped the council will "promote energy usage transparency" and encourage miners to use renewable sources. According to a tweet by MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, who convened the meeting of the group and Elon Musk, the council includes "the leading Bitcoin miners in North America." But research from a group of universities suggested that China accounted for more than 75% of Bitcoin mining as of April 2020. The authors estimated that 40% of China's Bitcoin mines were powered by coal.

[T]he group needs to do more than "disclosing and promoting the use of renewables," Alex de Vries of the website Digiconomist told the BBC. "Even if we had disclosure, that doesn't change the natural incentive of these miners to search out the cheapest and most constant sources of power - which typically comes down to (obsolete) fossil fuels," he said. "Kentucky even came up with a tax break for Bitcoin miners to come and use their obsolete coalfields. So, I'm not seeing this trend towards more renewables." However council member Peter Wall, Chief Executive of Argo, argued that increasingly US Bitcoin miners were choosing renewable power. He felt the council could encourage change."It's early days, it's embryonic. There will be lots of discussions moving forward about the best way to promote sustainable Bitcoin mining and to do it not just in North America," he said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Bitcoin took investors on another rollercoaster ride over the weekend after a top regulator in China announced a crackdown on mining, a new tack in the country's ongoing fight against the cryptocurrency. The government will "crack down on bitcoin mining and trading behavior and resolutely prevent the transfer of individual risks to the society," said the statement, which was issued by the Financial Stability and Development Committee of the State Council, the country's cabinet equivalent. The committee is chaired by Vice Premier Liu He, who acts as President Xi Jinping's top representative on economic and financial matters.

"The wording of the statement did not leave much leeway for cryptocurrency mining," Li Yi, chief research fellow at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told the South China Morning Post. "When all mining activities are banned in China, it will be a turning point for the fate of bitcoin, as a large chunk of its processing power is taken out of the picture." The Chinese government isn't just worried about financial stability, either. A commentary piece in Xinhua News, the Communist Party's official media outlet, elaborated on the government's stance, voicing concerns about bitcoin's role in money laundering, drug trafficking, and smuggling. It also mentioned bitcoin's profligate energy use. Last week, China warned financial institutions not to participate in crypto-transactions or related services.

The combination of bitcoin's high price and its tremendous energy demand has pushed miners to take extreme positions. Miners in China have flocked to provinces such as Inner Mongolia, where cheap coal power makes mining more profitable. The scale of these facilities reflects how much money investors have sunk into the projects. At least one mining facility in Inner Mongolia draws more than 50 MW. Similarly large operations are popping up in the US, too. In upstate New York, a private equity firm bought and revamped an abandoned power plant just to mine bitcoin. When its data centers are completed, mining will consume 79 percent of the power plant's capacity, or 85 MW. China's warning to bitcoin miners is certain to push many operations out of the country. At least one bitcoin observer said that he anticipates miners pushed out of China will set up operations in Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and Afghanistan.

Business Insider re-visits the story of why May 22nd is celebrated as "Bitcoin Pizza Day." Exactly 11 years ago today, a software programmer from Florida, Laszlo Hanyecz, became well known in the crypto world after trading 10,000 bitcoins for two Papa John's pizzas. In honor of that purchase, the date is now celebrated in the crypto calendar as "Bitcoin Pizza Day."

"It wasn't like bitcoins had any value back then, so the idea of trading them for a pizza was incredibly cool," Hanyecz said in an interview with the New York Times in 2013... In 2018, he gave an interview to Cointelegraph. He said: "You know, I don't regret it. I think that it's great that I got to be part of the early history of bitcoin in that way, and people know about the pizza and it's an interesting story because everybody can kind of relate to that and be [like] - "Oh my God, you spent all of that money!"
So today Papa John's is giving away 10,000 slices of pizza to commemorate their place in history, another Business Insider article reports. Justin Falciola, SVP, chief insights & technology officer, tells them that "Celebrating National Bitcoin Pizza Day felt like a natural extension of Papa John's historical tie to the bitcoin story... It's great for consumer brands to show that they're aware of trends and emerging technologies. The benefit to this is meeting consumers where they are and continuing to build a meaningful connection."

The link between pizza and bitcoin was further observed earlier in the week when crypto investor Anthony Pompliano launched a bitcoin-themed pizza service in the US that won't accept the digital asset as payment. As Insider's Shalini Nagarajan reported, the service will partner with independent pizzerias in 10 cities across the US, but won't accept bitcoin payments. All proceeds will go towards supporting research and development of bitcoin, Pompliano said.
The article also points out that "Earlier this week, the crypto market lost 47% of its value in just seven days," and by Friday one bitcoin was worth $37,340.

But another article notes that the 10,000 bitcoins traded for two Papa Johns pizzas would, at one point this year, have been worth $648,950,000.

Around 4.5% of all bitcoin mining takes place in Iran, allowing the country to earn hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies that can be used to buy imports and lessen the impact of sanctions, a new study has found. At its current level of mining, Iran's bitcoin production would amount to revenues close $1 billion a year, according to figures from blockchain analytics firm Elliptic. Reuters reports: The United States imposes an almost total economic embargo on Iran, including a ban on all imports including those from the country's oil, banking and shipping sectors. While, exact figures are "very challenging to determine," Elliptic estimates are based on data collected from bitcoin miners by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance up to April 2020, and statements from Iran's state-controlled power generation company in January that up to 600 MW of electricity was being consumed by miners.

"Iran has recognised that bitcoin mining represents an attractive opportunity for a sanctions-hit economy suffering from a shortage of hard cash, but with a surplus of oil and natural gas," the study finds. The electricity being used by miners in Iran would require the equivalent of around 10 million barrels of crude oil each year to generate, around 4% of total Iranian oil exports in 2020, according to the study. "The Iranian state is therefore effectively selling its energy reserves on the global markets, using the Bitcoin mining process to bypass trade embargoes," the study reads. "Iran-based miners are paid directly in Bitcoin, which can then be used to pay for imports - allowing sanctions on payments through Iranian financial institutions to be circumvented."

The Treasury Department on Thursday announced that it is taking steps to crack down on cryptocurrency markets and transactions, and said it will require any transfer worth $10,000 or more to be reported to the Internal Revenue Service. From a report: "Cryptocurrency already poses a significant detection problem by facilitating illegal activity broadly including tax evasion," the Treasury Department said in a release. "This is why the President's proposal includes additional resources for the IRS to address the growth of cryptoassets," the department added.

"Within the context of the new financial account reporting regime, cryptocurrencies and cryptoasset exchange accounts and payment service accounts that accept cryptocurrencies would be covered. Further, as with cash transactions, businesses that receive cryptoassets with a fair market value of more than $10,000 would also be reported on." Bitcoin traded off its highs for the day on the Treasury headlines and was last up just 1%, according to Coin Metrics. Previously in the session, it was up more than 9%. A growing number of Wall Street analysts have over the past month sounded the alarm that regulators at Treasury and the Securities and Exchange Commission could soon take a more active role in cryptocurrency regulation.

Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Ethereum and seemingly every cryptocurrency out there took a big hit Wednesday following the news of China reconfirming its criticism of the crypto service. This appeared to contribute to a sell-off across the board and is even affecting the stock market. CNET reports: The China Internet Finance Association said it will not allow the country's financial institutions to partake in any business related to cryptocurrency due to the volatile nature of the digital coins, according to a Chinese media report Tuesday that was spotted earlier by Coindesk. This move isn't new. China took a similar stance back in 2017, which also resulted in a massive Bitcoin selloff.

Bitcoin's price dropped sharply Wednesday morning to a low of just below $32,000. It has since rebounded to $37,000, according to Coindesk, which still makes it a loss of 12% for the day. Ethererum and Dogecoin also saw drops at about the same time and are down 12% and 13% respectively.

The operator of the Colonial Pipeline learned it was in trouble at daybreak on May 7, when an employee found a ransom note from hackers on a control-room computer. By that night, the company's chief executive came to a difficult conclusion: He had to pay. From a report: Joseph Blount, CEO of Colonial Pipeline, told The Wall Street Journal that he authorized the ransom payment of $4.4 million because executives were unsure how badly the cyberattack had breached its systems or how long it would take to bring the pipeline back. Mr. Blount acknowledged publicly for the first time that the company had paid the ransom, saying it was an option he felt he had to exercise, given the stakes involved in a shutdown of such critical energy infrastructure. The Colonial Pipeline provides roughly 45% of the fuel for the East Coast, according to the company. "I know that's a highly controversial decision," Mr. Blount said in his first public remarks since the crippling hack. "I didn't make it lightly. I will admit that I wasn't comfortable seeing money go out the door to people like this. But it was the right thing to do for the country," he added.

[...] Mr. Blount said Colonial paid the ransom in consultation with experts who had previously dealt with the criminal organization behind the attacks. He and others involved declined to detail who assisted in those negotiations. Colonial said it has cyber insurance, but declined to provide details on ransomware-related coverage. In return for the payment, made in the form of bitcoin, about 75 in all, according to a person familiar with the matter, the company received a decryption tool to unlock the systems hackers penetrated. While it proved to be of some use, it was ultimately not enough to immediately restore the pipeline's systems, the person said.

After Ethereum transitions to proof-of-stake, the blockchain's power consumption is expected to drop by more than 99%, making it about 7,000 times more energy efficient than Bitcoin. Crypto Briefing reports: Ethereum will reduce its energy consumption by 99.95% following its transition to proof-of-stake, according to a new blog post from Carl Beekhuizen of the Ethereum Foundation. Beekhuizen estimated there are 87,000 at-home stakers using about 100W of energy for a total of 1.64 megawatts. Additionally, there are another 52,700 exchanges and custodial services that use about 100W per 5.5 validators for a total of 0.98 megawatts. Based on those estimates, Beekhuizen says that Ethereum will consume about 2.62 megawatts when it switches to proof-of-stake.

Beekhuizen added that this estimate may be too large. He noted that his own personal staking setup was optimized to use 15W, while some staking services use as little as 5W per validator. This means that Ethereum will no longer use the energy equivalent of a country or even a city. Instead, its total consumption will be comparable to a small town that contains around 2100 homes.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: DarkSide, the hacker group behind the recent Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, received a total of $90 million in bitcoin ransom payments before shutting down last week, according to new research. Colonial Pipeline was hit with a devastating cyberattack earlier this month that forced the company to shut down approximately 5,500 miles of pipeline in the United States, crippling gas delivery systems in Southeastern states. The FBI blamed the attack on DarkSide, a cybercriminal gang believed to be based in Eastern Europe, and Colonial reportedly paid a $5 million ransom to the group.

On Friday, London-based blockchain analytics firm Elliptic said it had identified the bitcoin wallet used by DarkSide to collect ransom payments from its victims. The same day, security researchers Intel 471 said DarkSide had closed down after losing access to its servers and as its cryptocurrency wallets were emptied. DarkSide also blamed "pressure from the U.S.," according to a note obtained by Intel 471. In a blog post Tuesday, Elliptic said DarkSide and its affiliates bagged at least $90 million in bitcoin ransom payments over the past nine months from 47 victims. The average payment from organizations was likely $1.9 million, Elliptic said. "To our knowledge, this analysis includes all payments made to DarkSide, however further transactions may yet be uncovered, and the figures here should be considered a lower bound," said Tom Robinson Elliptic's co-founder and chief scientist.

According to Elliptic, $15.5 million of the $90 million total haul went to DarkSide's developer while $74.7 million went to its affiliates. The majority of the funds are being sent to crypto exchanges, where they can be converted into fiat money, Elliptic added.

Slashdot reader quonset writes: To this day no one is sure why he did it, but in 1989 a Harvard-taught evolutionary biologist named Joseph Popp mailed out 20,000 floppy discs with malware on them to people around the world. At the time he was doing research into AIDS and the discs had been sent to attendees of the World Health Organization's AIDS conference in Stockholm.

Eddy Willems was working for an insurance company in Belgium and his boss asked him to see what was on the disc...
CNN picks up the story: Willems was expecting to see medical research when the disc's contents loaded. Instead he became a victim of the first act of ransomware — more than 30 years before the ransomware attack on the US Colonial Pipeline... A few days after inserting the disc, Willems' computer locked and a message appeared demanding that he send $189 in an envelope to a PO Box in Panama. "I didn't pay the ransom or lose any data because I figured out how to reverse the situation," he told CNN Business.

He was one of the lucky ones: Some people lost their life's work.

"I started to get calls from medical institutions and organizations asking how I got around it," said Willems, who is now a cybersecurity expert at G Data, which developed the world's first commercial antivirus solution in 1987. "The incident created a lot of damage back in those days. People lost a lot of work. It was not a marginal thing — it was a big thing, even then...." It's unclear if any people or organizations paid the ransom.
CSO reports that Popp was eventually arrested and charged with multiple counts of blackmail after law enforcement identified him as the owner of the P.O. box where the ransom checks were to be sent.

CNN adds that "One of the biggest problems about ransomware nowadays is that ransoms are often paid with cryptocurrency, such as bitcoin, which is exchanged anonymously and not traceable."