The Department of Treasury has issued sanctions on the 21st of September 2021 against the exchange of cryptocurrency for fighting the increasing problems of ransomware attacks.
The target was the Russian company Suex, one most prolific launderers of money in the universe of cryptocurrency. 40 per cent h transactions made by Suex have the involvement of unlawful activities like accepting payments from cybercriminals or ransomware attackers.
Why does it matter?
Ransomware attacks had surged up to 300% in 2020. It had crippled the critical infrastructure and the change of supply by holding hostages of digital information.
- Colonial pipeline which is a huge pipeline in the United States was made offline forcefully for 6 days in the month of May.
- A co-op of lowa grain faced a cyberattack on Monday where the hackers made a demand of $5.9 million for unlocking the organization’s data.
Although most of the crypto activity is legalised the Department of Treasury had stressed that it can always get exploited by the bad actors & leveraged for the purpose of ransomware attacks. The decentralized nature of crypto is making it a lot difficult to track the hackers down.
The officials have said that there will be more sanctions on the criminals of digital currency.
What is Ransomware?
Ransomware, a kind of malware of crypto-virology which threatens the victims for publishing their personal information or data or blocks access to important data unless paid a ransom. While simple ransomware is easily reversible by a person knowledgeable, advanced ransomware uses techniques like cryptoviral extortion. This blocks the files of the victim and makes them inaccessible and in return for that the attackers demand payment in cryptocurrency for decrypting them. In ransomware attacks, the victim had to make the payment via digital currencies making it generally difficult to trace.