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Ransomware Payments Hit a Record $1.1 Billion in 2023
After a slowdown in payments to ransomware gangs in 2022, last year saw total ransom payouts jump to their highest level yet, according to a new report from crypto-tracing firm Chainalysis.
Allan Liska, a threat intelligence analyst at Recorded Future, argues that the highly public nature of ransomware serves as a kind of advertising, constantly pulling in more opportunistic hackers, like sharks who smell blood in the water. Many of Conti's members then reformed under the brand of the Hive ransomware operation—which turned out to have been i nfiltrated for months by the FBI and other agencies who were quietly stealing the group's decryption keys to foil hundreds of their extortion attempts. In fact, she says, it's driven ransomware groups to constantly seek new laundering methods and, in some cases, forced them to hold on to ransom payments for years before they attempt to cash out that dirty crypto, for fear that it will be frozen or seized.
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