Sketchy doesn’t begin to describe this DOJ narrative.
According to their press release the DOJ seized 63.7 Bitcoin (digital currency) through accessing a server in North Carolina used to enter the Bitcoin wallet password of the original hackers. However, the DOJ still claims the “hackers” were sophisticated Russian operatives. Meaning the “Russian Hackers” were so sophisticated they could hack a major gas pipeline, but not sophisticated enough to protect their wallet and hosted it online on a US based server?
DOJ […] approximately 63.7 bitcoins, representing the proceeds of the victim’s ransom payment, had been transferred to a specific address, for which the FBI has the “private key,” or the rough equivalent of a password needed to access assets accessible from the specific Bitcoin address. (read more)
Doesn’t this seem like either the private key wasn’t private, or the FBI was the original hacker of the pipeline?
WASHINGTON – The Department of Justice today announced that it has seized 63.7 bitcoins currently valued at approximately $2.3 million. These funds allegedly represent the proceeds of a May 8, ransom payment to individuals in a group known as DarkSide, which had targeted Colonial Pipeline, resulting in critical infrastructure being taken out of operation. The seizure warrant was authorized earlier today by the Honorable Laurel Beeler, U.S. Magistrate Judge for the Northern District of California.
“Following the money remains one of the most basic, yet powerful tools we have,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco for the U.S. Department of Justice. “Ransom payments are the fuel that propels the digital extortion engine, and today’s announcement demonstrates that the United States will use all available tools to make these attacks more costly and less profitable for criminal enterprises. We will continue to target the entire ransomware ecosystem to disrupt and deter these attacks. Today’s announcements also demonstrate the value of early notification to law enforcement; we thank Colonial Pipeline for quickly notifying the FBI when they learned that they were targeted by DarkSide.”
“There is no place beyond the reach of the FBI to conceal illicit funds that will prevent us from imposing risk and consequences upon malicious cyber actors,” said FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate. “We will continue to use all of our available resources and leverage our domestic and international partnerships to disrupt ransomware attacks and protect our private sector partners and the American public.” (full press release)
.
A) FBI/CIA/DIA did this and bosses were not happy when they found out;
b) Darkside did this but someone flipped on another case; or,
C) FumbleBumbleIncompetents got lucky.
If any government agency anywhere in the world has the capacity to break a blockchain password them blockchain is dead.
The only way to end this is to not only use fire with fire but scorched earth is needed. While shutting them down, go after the personal bank accounts and any investments owned by anyone connected to the Blockers, “ANYONE”””
Or it’s just all FAKE.
What? You didn’t find those tough-talking women believable?
D) Xiden and Co told Colonial to pay the ransom and that the ransom payment would be reimbursed by the US government – so the FBI created a fake account and deposited FBI money in the FBI’s account and then the narrative engineers held a press release about how great the FBI is.
Why stop there???? If they had the ability to hack their website, why didn’t they take it all???? Put them out of business. That’s the only way this or any country can stop the hacking. Question once again, if this country has the technological ability to hack into our enemy countries websites, why do they apparently refuse to do so? In China’s case, is Biden and family still on the Chinese payroll? Would anyone be surprised if they were?????????????????
Yeah, I know, I’m a meany.
Nope, not mean. No one here thinks that, this isn’t Vox.
Stop paying Fauci American dollars. He’s had enough of our money and it was chump change compared to what he made from the CCP AND Big Pharma!
He will soon find his ¥ doesn’t go as far …
Wow. Talk about fake news. There was no “hack”. There was no recovery of electronic money. Another completely bogus false flag event still being played out. I think this is now Act III of this whole shameful farce.
Timely when you’re trying to gin up support for a whamboozling infrastructure bill, where you want to define everything in it as infrastructure. C’mon man! You know, the thing…”
BINGO!!
And the Mississippi bridge ‘suddenly’ had to be closed and magically these ‘tragedies’ occur….
Don’t believe for 1 second EVER a hack (not from outside and not from RUssia). IF SO, NO recovery would have been made. Russians leaving their bounty on a NC server??? The govt thinks us so stupid…so dumb…..they are like kindergarteners trying to trick a seasoned, 30Y teacher.
FBI, CIA, IRS, NSA (name any alphabet) and the corruption is top to bottom and persuasive. The ‘so-called’ good apples don’t exist. Was it Hannity keeping up the ‘only 10% are bad at FBI? THEY ARE ALL CORRUPT. IF NOT, there would be whistleblowers galore and agents LEAVING with ‘stories’ to tell. Heard of any leaving? Heard any stories?? 100% corrupt, as is this entire govt. Top to bottom, every agency, every dept….
Over the last two years or so the fact there have been no whistleblowers from any of the letter agencies is astounding. Everyone is going along with these illegal schemes and scams? I agree. These apples are rotten to the core.
When the FBI sent the helicopters, boats and 25 members of a SWAT team while at the same time informing CNN to show up with camera teams at 5:00 am in the morning to arrest 75 yr old Roger Stone in his pajamas you know there is corruption from top to bottom.
Have you heard one whistleblower come forward?
only crickets.
A shameful episode in FBI History.
The ‘rank and file’ of the FBI are all useful idiots who wouldn’t jeopardize their career advancement and pensions if they had to bend over and take it up the rear from Dear Chairman Xi
And I am an unwavering supporter of Law, Order, and Police
They all look and sound so foolish.
They do look shoddy and unprofessional. Perhaps they should really spend some of their ill gotten gains on someone who could help them provide a better face for the syndicate
There’s a cyber-attack/false flag every two days anymore. These people are stupid.
There’s always the option they paid a different party to do the job then got the money back with an ‘under table’ payment for a job well done. Remember our three letter agencies are noteworthy for use of undercover party participation.
It does have a Brennan-esque feel, doesn’t it?
Yes, must not of been a banner year for the poppy crops in Afghanistan.
Reminds me of a certain scheme to abduct a certain Governor of a state, I think the state was Michigan…I could be wrong though…silly me.
I can believe that as well. Nonetheless, it was a GOVT covert operation, don’t doubt that.
Where is the money now? Will it be “returned” to the pipeline company?
What I want to know is who in the hell is that big guy on the left in that video? He reminds me of Lurch in Adams Family. He must be close to 7 feet tall. Anyways, in all of these press conferences, the “guberment” always has about a half a dozen people standing in the background like a bunch of department store mannequins for show.
Might be Comey’s brother. Or Kammie’s henchman–like she’s always over Joe’s right shoulder.
I think they all look like monsters! maybe alien beings have taken over the USA.
Over many years, I have observed Democrats (Liberals here in Canada) to be the ugliest & most despicable “people” you can imagine!
AND, they ALL work in Gov’t, since no-one in their right mind would hire them in the private sector.
Sure they have their “hot-looking people”, BUT they are only the “brainwashed useful idiots”… just look at Hollywood for lots of real-life examples of this!
That Cena guy who “apologized” to China in Mandarin is a prime example of this or look at the Rock! There are lots of actresses in Hollywood that I USED to like, till they came out in support of Communist China.
So the server is in NC but the warrant came from northern CA requested by the DoIJ in DC? Makes perfect sense!! Northern CA is represented in the House by whom? This magistrate also granted an injunction against President Trump citing a violation of the First Amendment rights of the Chinese American community from access to the Chinese social media app WeChat. Guess Swalwell and Feinstein could have been in on this one too!
I know the Democrats are fond of judge shopping to get the warrants that they need but why did they have to go clear across the country for this one? The stench of the Swamp is permeating the entire continent. No wonder the “progressives” are screaming for clean air and clean water. They have so tainted what we had by their immoral acts of treason!!
It’s automatically a sketchy enterprise when the Federal Bureau of Matters is involved. After all, the feds are crime stoppers, they’re crime enablers.
When I read the federal definition of terrorism I think of FIB.
(i)to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(ii)to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(iii)to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping
Reminder: This is the same ‘agency’ that told us that they couldn’t hack an iPhone.
It’s not funny at all but when it comes to the government there are ZERO safeties on connected electronic devices, ZERO. With enough time the government can access any device they want. They just don’t acknowledge the fact because that would be contrary to their interests.
Suffice to say, there is not a single safe connected electronic communication device on the planet. Act accordingly.
Exactly when does the Colonial Pipeline get their money returned? (Assume sarcasm).
and where did Colonial get that much Bitcoin to pay the Hackers?
FBI has no one to blame but themselves…its credibility is zip, zero, nada
Possibly related? From a few hours ago:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cnn-new-york-times-other-news-websites-experience-outage-n1269921
probably a taste of what’s coming next……..My computer glitched out last night. Without me touching it, it just shut down. Then I got MS-DOS messages about recovery. Probably not connected cause I’m just a little unknown person, but we need Sundance’s suspicious cat…..!
Like everything else that they do….I think that whole thing is a democrat Scam.
Create a Gas Crisis to make the price of gas soar… Claim that the Pipeline was Hacked... Supposedly, Pay a MultiMillion dollar ransom…then claim that you solved the crime….
by hacking into a Crypto Wallet that is supposed to be Unhackable !
JUST MORE PURE BULL-SCHITT FROM THE IL-LEGITIMTE RESIDENTS
IN THE WHITE HOUSE !
HANG EVERY ONE OF THEM IMMEDIATELY !
Big Government attacking OUR Oil Supplies and Crypto at the same time !
They’re trying to Discredit Crypto by saying that they can break the Code !
MORE BULL-SCHITT FROM THE CRIMINALS IN DC !
Well, now, hold on… where does it say they can break the code? Maybe I missed that, but to me it seems what they are saying is ‘they had the code’. Now, how does that happen? Like all the major news worthy disasters, this evil government had a hand in it. Once you realize that – our government is (chances are good) involved at both ends, I wonder – why should my son or daughter go and fight THEIR wars?
This entire thing has the government disinformation (designed to erode confidence in blockchain and crypto currencies) written all over it…
How could we verify they are telling the truth? We couldn’t.
How could we verify they were not behind the scheme from the get-go? Again, we could not.
Can we trust these people? Well… That’s an easy one–we cannot and we should not.
Also, for the record, “anonymous crypto payments” do not really exist. The transaction cannot remain anonymous because at some point you are going to have to cash out from cripto to fiat. The bigger the amount the more difficult it gets to hide or mix/launder crypto…
An added note.
The perps are required to file a tax return and report this as income.
The seizure was done under asset forfeiture statutes and jeopardy assessment.
Now the coins ripped out of the “account” are not a tax deductible expense.
I decided to drop a few coins into cryptos. No much, just some fun stuff. Anyway, right after I do Elon Musk makes his statement about Tesla not taking Bitcoin and now the FBI says they can get it whenever they want. Needless to say, that crypto investment is looking like a bad bet right about now.
As they say in the precious metals business – ‘if you don’t hold it, you don’t own it’.
The government of El Salvador just announced they now take Bitcoin.
After the events of the last few years the default setting for the DOJ’s vomitus is “narrative.” Or, as we say here in flyover country, this story’s a pantload.
Let’s see… so the oil pipeline gets hacked and then a meat packing facility causing shortages in both of these areas. And it’s Russia blamed as the culprit.
The left hates oil and they hate meat. And Russia Russia Russia again as the scapegoat.
Based on this logic…these “attacks” are a product of our Gov…which industry is next?
Trial runs for the coming cyber pandemic.
Many people think that “Bitcoin” is money – it isn’t – and that it’s anonymous and unaccountable – it’s not. It’s a barter system based on numbers that are thought to be “hard to compute.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9663125/Fake-encrypted-app-cooked-beers-Aussie-cops-FBI-leads-global-sting.html
Just saying that maybe the connection is, one of those arrested may have said cut me a deal and the pipe line ransom can be recovered.
Or cut me a deal and the appearance that it was recovered can be made.
When I heard this yesterday, I felt the same way, total BS. And once again blame the Russians, to take away the heat from the CCP. This was a set up by the CIA.
Intended or not, this is shot across all Bitcoin owners, investors, and traders bow.
Real hackers all over the world are laughing. Hard. It’s crazy that the exact things the Globalists want gone for the GR are the exact things that are targeted. Oil then meat?Color me surprised!
I don’t believe a word of what any of the thieves in Washington say.
DC is a House of Mirrors. We should believe absolutely nothing and no one from there. It’s all lies, half-truths and propaganda.
I’ve thought for years that “identity theft” and similar are the work of the dark agencies within the US government to fund their dark enterprises. “Identity theft” would not be that hard to solve, just require 3rd party verification of all significant transactions (similar to the 3rd party verification required to stop long-distance slamming in the 80’s and 90’s). They don’t fix it because they don’t want to
There’s very few ways to have the private key to a wallet:
I’d lay odds on #1, it was the FIB’s wallet. Only 63.7 of 75 bitcoin was recovered. I guess the “big guy” got his cut …
The wallet belonged to a U.S. government agency. That is why some of the funds were “recovered” the rest has already been distributed to the Democrat party.
Years ago we would have held our heads high on this news, that our illustrious FBI could do such a thing! No more. First question is, how do we know they’re telling the truth. Maybe as Sundance has put forth, it’s possible they were the hackers. Or they’re just simply lying and they got nuthin’ just to make themselves look effectual.
No, no one rejoices or holds their head up in pride. Let the shareholders of Colonial Pipeline demand return of the recovered ransom payment (and good luck with that).
From Codemonkey Z on Telegram:
“When Director Wray said that FBI partners were able to help get crypto private keys, he was probably talking about crypto exchanges.
When you put your crypto coins into an exchange, the exchange owns your private key until you withdraw.
Exchanges working closely with law enforcement is the biggest takeaway from this affidavit, but is also common sense.
If the exchange had a strong KYS program, then the thieves will likely be arrested sooner than later. However, many exchanges dont do vigorous KYS, so it is possible the thieves got away with it this time and will know better than putting coins into an exchange next time.”
Exactly. Stupid JoeBama giving away the method they used to penetrate the crypto exchange and letting the bad guys (whoever they are) know how to evade them next time. No OpSec, no common sense. A clever FBI would simply let the seizure be a mystery, perhaps not even announce it at all. So the bad guys only know they got jacked, but not how or by whom.
But stupid is as stupid does.
Heck – a REALLY clever FBI op would make it look like somebody else took the crypto. Perhaps somebody inside the criminal organization, sow the seeds of distrust among the criminal gang. But NOOOOOO.
DOJ press release mentions a supporting affidavit, anyone have a link to that?
Curious…Notice that the press release does not state that the DOJ seized the bitcoin from the hackers or that they caught the hackers. There are numerous websites that enable a user to anonymously swap one crypto for another (such swapping BTC for a privacy coin like Monero or ZCash). Eventually the coins end up in an exchange account that the swap site is using on their back-end via an API. It’s possible that the FBI/DOJ got a warrant to seize the coins from a third party who facilitated the swap and that the hackers still have their money.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.379840/gov.uscourts.cand.379840.1.0.pdf
See my post above from CodeMonkeyZ with the affidavit link in a separate reply.
Wow a real shocker
I wonder why it took them so long . I mean now we can trust the fbi for sure they are on our side roflmao
The problem this government has is they think we are all as dumb and blind as their followers aka Democrats.
Darkside = Shawn Henry
If the DOJ/FBI story is true, then it’s pretty dumb to brag about sources and methods so the “Russian hackers” can learn from their mistakes and avoid repeating them next time.
But that’s how JoeBama rolls. Bragging to get clout with their own groupies to the detriment of US national security. Remember when he immediately broke the news about taking down Osama Bin Ladin and capturing all his computers and data, so Al Queda et al were alerted to the breach and could take countermeasures to secure their networks?
Seems to me …..if I was a “Russian hacker” with the ability to shut down a major US pipeline, I wouldn’t demand a couple million bucks worth of bitcoins. A couple C130s loaded with newly minted dollars is what I’d demand. But hey, I’m just an old truck driver…..took me a month to learn how to run my GPS!
that’s a really really good point.
you cause gridlock to a quarter of the USA and you only ask for a couple million??
there are probably teenagers in this country that have made more than that daytrading bitcoin with robinhood.
maybe the see eye aye bitcoin petty cash fund was depleted, so they had to go with an unrealistic puny ransom demand.
“you cause gridlock to a quarter of the USA and you only ask for a couple million??”
Maybe they are like Dr. Evil and just woke up from a twenty year sleep and don’t know how the value of money has changed.
Sidney said is succinctly. Licensed to Lie
Using their “Never Let a Good Crisis Go To Waste” strategy, Dems will certainly use the “Ransomware Attack” panic to convince Americans to accept MORE control of our personal technology infrastructure.
I can’t wait to see what sort of cockamamie nonsense they will foist on us.
My first instinct is the hack of the pipeline and meat processing plants were by our own IC to try and place the blame of rising prices on those events and not on inflation and economic policies of the regime.
I’m paying more than double on gas at the pump and more than double for my meat.
These hacks are just too convenient to be real. Add to the fact the narrative is now that these cyber attacks are going to become more frequent it sure looks like they are trying to hid rising inflation on these events to deflect blame from where it belongs.
They “know” they are going to become more frequent but never state what they will do to stop them. Curious, very curious.
And the “FIB” announcement of this ‘retrieval’ of BTC from a private wallet drives the price of BTC and other widely accepted cryptos down to lowest levels in a while…..hmmmm.
I guess we need to believe that the digital yuan or USDC or SDR is much “safer” since backed by a government or the IMF. Thus, it must be so much more secure….. yeah, right
son-of-big-guy requested a buying opportunity
I cannot believe any report coming from anywhere especially from the “DOJ” and narrated by “THE MEDIA”. A person can only read so much made up garbage from the same can so long when you finally are convinced the can is tainted along with the garbage. How can the American people believe any scenario they come up with. Was the pipeline actually hacked or was did they just shut it down and fire all the people??? The “DOJ” is supposed to be doing something so they staged the takedown of the so called ‘HACKERS’. I can’t help but think they couldn’t get the gas prices high enough faster so they improvised, that is how trusting I am.
“There is no place beyond the reach of the FBI to conceal illicit funds …
Super! So the FBI can disgorge ALL the Biden’s Caribbean offshore bank accounts … and the Clintons … and John F. Kerry … and …
The Vatican Bank is out of reach for them.
It’s all fake…..total attempt to manipulate our fears and emotions……sure they got the ransom money back, sure thing Mr Garland…..LOL!
Bitcoin is not real money. It has yet to formally be declared legal tender in even one country. It is a massive video game fraud that is not backed up by any system or basis. Cyberpunks and anarchists love it.
or, the FBI was very clever and disciplined in that they hacked the hackers.
It looks like this ‘hack’ was a test run for something else.
It certainly appears the hacking group left the BTC on Coinbase exchange. They should have, and maybe did, know better. Perhaps the Feds got a hold of it before they could launder/exchange it for Monero/Pirate and BTC transactions are trackable.
Or, I would argue equally as likely at least, the entire Op was supported by TLAs and they decided to burn their entire team of assets. Wouldn’t be the first time they’ve pulled similar.
Back in the 90’s/00’s they would burn hacker teams staffed with assets if they were 1) simply done with them 2) needed to reassign them to new roles which they knew the team members would reject. Nothing like threats of being charged with new terrorism crimes to motivate aspies to level up their roles despite any sort of moral objections.
Wasn’t Lisa Monaco connected to coup on Trump?
75 bitcoin ransom was paid but only 63.7 retrieved, where is the rest, is it kept for commissions?
I am calling BS here.
Smart enough to hack the system and not smart enough to move Bitcoin?
Really?
And where’s the perps?
Who are they? Where from?
Did they hack others?
Sooooo tired of this BS from FBI/DOJ.