Henceforth, the U.S. Department of Justice will liken ransomware attacks to terrorism, since they both exhibit dreadful threats and devastating outcomes, Techbooky report.
The U.S. Law enforcement agency has realized the need to curtail such unauthorized cyberattacks that also hacked the Colonial Pipeline, mounting damaging outcomes
Per one of DoJ’s top-level officials, John Carlin’s consent about the investigation that portrays the internet as another community where criminal activity thrives without control.
Still, the U.S. attorney’s office received information from Internal Guidance about the outrageous increase of cyberattacks and the ongoing investigations should also include the organized task force based in Washington.
“It’s a specialized process to ensure we track all ransomware cases regardless of where it may be referred in this country,” DoJ’s principal associate deputy attorney general, John Carlin said. “so you can make the connections between actors and work your way up to disrupt the whole chain.”
Before 2020, ransomware has been a trend without much concern from the government. Hacking classified data via the web has targeted Americans in most cases, while they are been traced back to Russia — the lair of bad actors.
According to U.S. authorities that claim the Russian’s also hacked their pipeline stationed on the East Coast of America — a ridiculous amount of ransomware comes in after the perpetrators have accessed classified information.
It worth noting that, the entire pipeline encountered an outage afterward that lasted for several days. As expected, the gas shortage has erupted, focusing on the South East while the price of gas inflated as well.
Without revealing the identity of the perpetrators that breached the Colonial Pipeline, they offered the hacker $5m based on their discretion.
While the DoJ contradicts the Pipeline’s offering — they tagged it “blackmailing’ — an offering that doesn’t guarantee total access without future interference from the hackers.
“To ensure we can make necessary connections across national and global cases and investigations,” Internal Guidance supports the DoJ’s consent about hackers and the current gas shortage.
“To allow us to develop a comprehensive picture of the national and economic security threats we face, we must enhance and centralize our internal tracking,” Carlin added.
With enough consideration and support from other agencies, John Carlin declared on behalf of the DoJ to prioritize ransomware as a special case related to terrorism. “We’ve used this model around terrorism before but never with ransomware.”
The consistency of these cyberattacks is liable to threaten national security, according to a security expert. The involvement of special terror measures insinuates the DoJ’s investigation will report first to top-level officials in Washington.
Both DoJ and Internal Guidance are focusing on a larger ecosystem of cybercrime activities, such as money laundering via the Web, illegal online forums, cryptocurrency exchange, hornets, etc.
While the investigation is ongoing, it worth noting that these hackers have used Bulletproof hosting services to conceal their identities.
Meanwhile, several companies such as SolarWind, Microsoft, Apple & Quanta Computer, FireEye, and JBS, have been a victim of incognito hosting server, to infiltrate corporate affairs stealthily aiming to earn ransomware.
