The criminal cyber cartel blamed for the ransomware attack on a US pipeline that caused petrol shortages for motorists this week has said it is ceasing operations, according to cyber security researchers. The news comes after the Colonial Pipeline Company made a ransom payment to the hackers worth almost $5m as it worked to restart its 5,500-mile network, said people familiar with the matter. DarkSide, the suspected Russian-based group that the FBI has said was responsible for the attack, has told its affiliates it is shuttering its services, said FireEye, a cybersecurity group appointed to investigate the incident.
Until now, DarkSide has maintained the ransomware but also rented it out to others via an affiliate programme, taking a cut of any proceeds from attacks that seize control of an organization’s data or software systems and lockout the owners using encryption until payments are made.
In a post on the dark web, found by researchers at Recorded Future and seen by the Financial Times, it also said it had lost control of much of its public infrastructure — including its dark web blog and the server it uses to accept ransom payments — and that its crypto funds had been seized.
“The post cited law enforcement pressure and pressure from the United States for this decision,” said Kimberly Goody, senior manager for financial crime analysis at FireEye’s Mandiant Threat Intelligence arm.
It is unclear whether the disruption to the group’s infrastructure was directed by authorities, and also whether DarkSide was taking itself offline with a view to later taking up operations again under a different guise, known as an “exit scam”.
US President Joe Biden said he has “strong reason” to believe the DarkSide hackers were based in Russia, but that he did not believe Moscow was directly responsible.
“We have been in direct communication with Moscow about the imperative for responsible countries to take decisive action against these ransomware networks,” he said on Thursday.
Colonial made a ransom payment to hackers using cryptocurrency, said two people familiar with the matter. “It was a certain number of bitcoin that added up to a hair under $5m,” said one of the