FBI Says Crypto Payments Are Challenging Amid Rise In Ransom Attacks

The FBI says crypto payments are a challenging issue amid the rise In ransom attacks and the assistant director of the Cyber division called crypto “the only game in town” for the cybercriminals as we can continue reading in today’s latest cryptocurrency news.

During a virtual panel with Bloomberg, the assistant director of the FBI Cyber Division Bryan Vorndran said that crypto is the main currency and the main vehicle to facilitate extortion payments. Vorndran added that despite the many opportunities offered by blockchain technology:

 “the ability to pay crypto, script it immediately into a tumbler, whether through an extortion payment or theft, is a huge, huge challenge for us.”

The tumbler is a piece of technology that can obfuscate the source of crypto that can be used to clean ill-g0tten funds and they are sometimes called mixers. These tools are often the user to hide the source of BTC in ransomware cases during which the attackers encrypt the computer systems of a certain entity and freeze the owners’ ability to access their data in exchange for payments in BTC so they can unlock the systems. One of Bitcoin’s main selling points however was that it allows anyone in the world to send any amount of money at any time and make it convenient against cash in the digital era. The Assistant director summed up that for cybercriminals, crypto is the only game in town.

As recently reported, Back in August, the Federal Bureau of Investigation-FBI confiscated more than $2 million worth of digital assets linked to ransomware attacks that were committed to the Russian resident Aleksandr Sikerin. The criminal was well-known for his connections to the cyber gang ReVil which assaulted plenty of US businesses in the past. The news reported by CNN informed that the confiscated amount of crypto is traceable to ransom attacks that were committed by Sikerin who was a part of the ransomware gang ReVil according to US law enforcement officials. His last known address was in St.
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Petersburg in Russia which only indicates that he has connections to the organization.

The confiscation was a part of the ongoing US effort to obstruct the funding sources for the Eastern European and Russian cybercriminals following a few attacks on American companies.