Colonial Pipeline has reportedly paid $5 million to the DarkSide hackers group, Bloomberg reports, citing people with the transaction. The ransom was paid in the so-called "difficult-to-trace cryptocurrency" within hours after the attack.
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It remains unknown whether the Georgia-based fuel pipeline operator paid in monero (XMR), the well-known privacy-focused cryptocurrency, or not. Bloomberg's source also said that US government officials are aware that the company made the payment.
After Colonial made the payment, it received a decrypting tool to restore its disabled computer network. Colonial suffered a malware cyberattack that triggered a shutdown of their operations on May 7, 2021. In January this year, Bittrex delisted all the privacy-focused cryptocurrencies from its platform, including zcash (ZEC) and dash (DASH). The official reason behind the listing remains unknown.
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