US Treasury Says It Tied $5.2 Billion in BTC Transactions To Ransomware Payments (therecord.media)
- Reference: 0153859037
- News link: https://it.slashdot.org/story/21/10/18/1945248/us-treasury-says-it-tied-52-billion-in-btc-transactions-to-ransomware-payments
- Source link: https://therecord.media/treasury-said-it-tied-5-2-billion-in-btc-transactions-to-ransomware-payments/
> FinCEN officials said the figure was compiled by analyzing 2,184 Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) filed by US financial institutions over the last decade, between January 1, 2011, and June 30, 2021. While the initial SAR reports highlighted $1.56 billion in suspicious activity, a subsequent FinCEN investigation of the Top 10 most common ransomware variants exposed additional transactions, amounting to around $5.2 billion just from these groups alone.
[1] https://therecord.media/treasury-said-it-tied-5-2-billion-in-btc-transactions-to-ransomware-payments/
but..but...but... (Score:1)
Bitcoin Is Anonymous!!
Bitcoin only has value for crime (Score:2)
There is literally absolutely no value to bitcoin what-so-ever, other than easy and difficult to track ways for criminals to transfer money.
Bitcoin is only useful for crime. That's it.
Re: (Score:1)
Oh it has other uses.
Illegal financing of "loyal" opposition abroad.
Illegal campaign financing
Illegal political party financing.
All of these are presently in use and they are used mostly with USA being the source and various "brave opposition leaders" being the destination. That, by the way is one of the main reasons why it is not banned and why it is not going to be banned any time soon.
You don't need Bitcoin to give unlimited money (Score:2)
To a corrupt political campaign or politician in the United States. Our Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that money is speech despite decades if not hundreds of years of precedence to the contrary. The last couple of rulings basically opened up the floodgates to unlimited dark money by striking down any attempts to identify who made a donation to a political campaign.
Cryptocurrency is used primarily to buy drugs, pay for prostitutes (and facilitate human trafficking), as a general money laundering tac
The real culprit (Score:1)
Maybe the takeaway should be that people and businesses with poor computer security are the real criminals. If you leave your door wide open; it's no wonder people come in and take your things.
Maybe it's time for mandatory licensing for online computers. Both users and servers.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep. We really don't do enough blaming of victims.
Time for that to change.
Re: (Score:3)
> Yep. We really don't do enough blaming of victims.
> Time for that to change.
Anything is better than blaming the responsible people so yeah, let's blame the victims, the currency... hell there is plenty of blame to go around, just as long as we don't solve the problem everything will be OK.
Re: (Score:2)
> Yep. We really don't do enough blaming of victims.
In a data breach, the victims are the customers and shareholders, not the IT people or their supervisors.
Re: (Score:2)
By your name you are a coder, well sorry to say, the real takeaway is that software writers are the real criminals. If you sell doors fulls of holes; it's no wonder people come in and take your client's things.
Maybe it's time for mandatory licensing for software sales, both coders and publishers.
Re: The real culprit (Score:1)
Some users are idiots and will never learn, but bugs in software, even serious ones, are unavoidable, so you will always have this kind of issue where someone finds a zero day and uses it to steal, lock or destroy your data. This can happen to everyone.
What users (and system administrators) need to learn is to make offline backups as frequently as possible. Yes, perhaps you will lose some data, but not enough to justify paying a ransom to have it back, because most of it is safe in your offline backup anywa
Re: (Score:2)
> Maybe it's time for mandatory licensing for online computers.
That is going too far. Many servers collect no data. Many more collect nothing important.
But perhaps it is time for certification of those responsible for systems that collect CC#s, SSNs, and other private data.
An even better solution is to eliminate the need for sharing that information in the first place. Some countries have online transactions that require sharing of no private information. America's reliance on SSNs to be widely known and secret is especially stupid,