The United States Department of the Treasury announced on Tuesday sanctions against Suex, a platform that allows the purchase and sale of virtual currencies, for its role “in facilitating financial transactions” by hackers. The Joe Biden Administration discovered that at least eight cyberattacks with ransomware —A virus that hackers use to hijack data and demand money in exchange for releasing it — they used Suex to carry out monetary transactions. It is the first cryptocurrency exchange network sanctioned by the US.
More than 40% of the history of transactions carried out by the platform were criminal in nature, according to investigations by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). The sanctions include blocking all properties and assets of the Czech Republic-based company in the United States, prohibiting US users from using it, and preventing transactions between Suex and financial institutions.
The Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, has warned that “cyberattacks and ransomware they are affecting companies large and small throughout the US and pose a direct threat to the economy, “so the US government will continue to” fight the evil actors “who perpetrate this type of abuse. According to Washington estimates, in 2020, bailout payments for ransomware reached more than 400 million dollars, four times more than in 2019.
Companies that “facilitate ransomware payments” for hackers, including financial institutions, cyber insurance companies, and companies involved in digital forensics, “not only encourage future ransomware payment demands, but may also run the risk of violating OFAC regulations ”, the Treasury has warned. Yellen has acknowledged that hackers use “increasingly sophisticated” methods and technologies, which is why it is necessary to adopt measures that go beyond sanctions and include reforms in regulatory matters.
One of the cyberattacks that has affected Americans the most occurred in early May, when Colonial, which operates one of the largest oil pipelines in the United States, was forced to suspend its activities after receiving “digital blackmail” from the cybercriminals network. Russians DarkSide. The stoppage generated serious supply problems, which caused endless queues at gas stations and service stations that limited purchases. Colonial paid the cybercriminals a ransom of about five million dollars in cryptocurrencies on the same day of the attack in order to be able to operate again. A month later, the Department of Justice announced that they had recovered more than two million dollars in cryptocurrency paid as a ransom.
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