The US government has offered a $10,000,000 reward for any information that could lead to the identification or arrest of members and operators of the DarkSide hack group.
It is emphasized that this reward can be obtained for any information about the heads of the Darkside, who occupy key positions in the faction. If the informant provides information that will lead to the arrest of DarkSide partners (in any country) who help hackers to carry out attacks, this information can get up to $5,000,000.
The US authorities said they are offering such a large reward due to an attack on the largest pipeline operator in the United States, the fuel transportation company Colonial Pipeline. Let me remind you that we talked about this attack in detail, because it was this incident that forced the authorities to introduce an emergency regime in a number of states and became the very straw that could break the back of a camel: the attention of law enforcement agencies to ransomware increased, and on hacker forums they rushed to ban advertising of ransomware.
After the attack on the Colonial Pipeline company, which drew too much attention from the authorities to the hackers, DarkSide ceased its activities, claiming that it had lost access to some of its accounts and servers. However, experts soon reported that the new BlackMatter ransomware could be considered the “successor” of the DarkSide malware, and the group clearly simply carried out a “rebranding”.
However, we also wrote that after REvil shut down, members of the hack group DarkSide hastily moved $7 million.
The aforementioned BlackMatter also stopped working last week, citing pressure from local authorities and some recent news. Representatives of the group did not explain exactly what news were discussed, but the statement came after a series of major arrests in recent weeks.
