{"id":130218,"date":"2021-11-08T04:25:21","date_gmt":"2021-11-08T12:25:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/11\/us-government-offers-10-million-bounty-for-information-on-colonial-pipeline-hackers"},"modified":"2021-11-08T04:25:21","modified_gmt":"2021-11-08T12:25:21","slug":"us-government-offers-10-million-bounty-for-information-on-colonial-pipeline-hackers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/11\/us-government-offers-10-million-bounty-for-information-on-colonial-pipeline-hackers","title":{"rendered":"US government offers $10 million bounty for information on Colonial Pipeline hackers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/us-government-offers-10-million-bounty-for-information-on-colonial-pipeline-hackers2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Fighting ransomware with bounties.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>In May, a ransomware attack <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2021\/5\/8\/22426158\/cyberattack-forces-shutdown-major-us-fuel-colonial-pipeline\">shut down a pipeline<\/a> carrying 45 percent of the fuel used on the US East Coast. The Colonial Pipeline incident led to panic buying and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2021\/6\/24\/22545675\/ransomware-cryptocurrency-regulation-hacks\">heightened fears<\/a> about the threat posed by simple hacks to national infrastructure. Now, the US State Department is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.state.gov\/reward-offers-for-information-to-bring-darkside-ransomware-variant-co-conspirators-to-justice\/\">offering a bounty of up to $10 million<\/a> to anyone who can supply the \u201cidentity or location\u201d of the leaders of the group responsible \u2014 an outfit known as DarkSide.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to the $10 million bounty, the state department is offering a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the arrest or conviction \u201cof any individual conspiring to participate in or attempting to participate in a DarkSide variant ransomware incident.\u201d What exactly that means isn\u2019t clear. Is a \u201cDarkSide variant ransomware incident\u201d one that involves the group\u2019s hacking tools? What if the software has been altered slightly? It seems deliberately ambiguous, allowing the State Department to cast as wide a net as possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fighting ransomware with bounties. In May, a ransomware attack shut down a pipeline carrying 45 percent of the fuel used on the US East Coast. The Colonial Pipeline incident led to panic buying and heightened fears about the threat posed by simple hacks to national infrastructure. Now, the US State Department is offering a bounty [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":609,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,1497,1490],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cybercrime-malcode","category-energy","category-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/609"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}