Lots of folks in infosec (no idea of the overall prevalence) are advocating for making ransom payments illegal.

One thing i don’t see discussed in that conversation is that the payment itself becomes a liability to the criminals.

That said, there’s no guarantee that the ransomware is no longer in a position to retaliate.

> A May 27 transfer of nearly 64 bitcoins landed at a virtual address to which the FBI gained access, providing an opportunity to get a warrant and pounce.

What does that mean?

Yeah this was confusing to me as well. I assumed that it was related to the devices that were seized[0] from the darkside group. Maybe this means the keys/wallet was is what the FBI gained access to.

[0] From the article: > On May 13, DarkSide told affiliates that its servers and other infrastructure had been seized, but didn’t specify where or how.

64/75 = ~85% so the non-darkside individual(s) transferred their bitcoins to an address FBI of North District of CA has (Page 7, #34) [1].

How they got it I've yet to see an article on.

[1]: https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1402056/downl...

Edit: My assumption is that the blacked out portion names an informant who made the transfer.