It seems the US Treasury Department is about to put its own government agencies between a rock and a hard place as they vow to attempt to shut off the methods by with ransomware hackers get paid. These hackers break into computer networks, taking them hostage, until the agency targeted pays them, throughy cryptocurrency exchanges. They mostly target governmment agencies because these groups have magic sources to money and the agencies simply must pay because they need that data fundamentally to perform their duties.
Now, with Treasury cutting off the method of payment, will this end the ransomware attacks or will it create a black market for government agencies to continue to pay the ransomware hackers as they have little choice but to do so? If so, will Treasury find itself prosecuting municipal managers for finding a way to pay the hackers through exchanges that might not be under US Treasury jurisdiction? I am betting that the latter will happen and the people in government who find themselves targeted will most likely choose expediency over cost, as governments are most often wont to do.
Treasury Department will sanction crypto exchanges that help channel payments to hackers
From www.washingtonpost.com
2021-09-21 17:06:06
Gerrit De Vynck
Excerpt:
The U.S. government is stepping up its efforts to disrupt the infrastructure hackers use to make money from breaking into and holding hostage computer networks, announcing sanctions against one virtual currency exchange and warning U.S. companies it could be legally risky for them to pay off hackers that hit their systems.
The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced sanctions Tuesday against Suex, an exchange that lets people buy and sell virtual currencies with regular credit cards, according to its website. The government said as much as 40 percent of known transactions run by Suex were criminal. Other exchanges could be hit with sanctions, too.
“We are going to continue to look at the ecosystem and look for actors that are taking similar actions,” Anne Neuberger, the White House’s deputy national security adviser on cybersecurity, said during a call with reporters.
