Some insurance companies are no longer covering ransomware, or are imposing a range of restrictions, he added. 'We have now seen, with our clients, ransoms paid in excess of 10 million dollars, with demands as high as 40, 50 and 60 million dollars,' said Oren Wortman, who handles cyber issues for the insurance brokerage firm Beecher Carlson.

The ransom demands, and the payments, have skyrocketed. 'It's not just cybersecurity, like, 'Hey, how do I stop attacks?' It's really gone down to, 'What is our ransomware strategy.' It's become very specific.' 'For the boards of directors of large companies, cybersecurity the last couple years has become a hot topic,' said Hitesh Sheth of Vectra. Meanwhile, private companies are realizing they need to focus more on the threat of ransomware. But the decision is up to the company or institution that has been hit, and many feel it's better to pay and resume operations rather than risk a protracted shutdown. The FBI discourages ransom payments, and some companies do refuse to pay. The FBI hasn't said how it did this, and this has prompted widespread speculation and a range of possible scenarios in the cybersecurity community. Has Recovered Some Of The Millions Paid In Ransom To Colonial Pipeline Hackers Even when the FBI located the computer, and had the court order, the bureau still needed the secret encryption key to unlock the account and capture the Bitcoin.īusiness U.S. court order to seize the funds.īut then comes the real mystery. When it did locate the account, the bureau then sought a U.S. And the cases are tough to solve.Īccording to court documents, the FBI worked its way through a maze of more than 20 cryptocurrency accounts to find the hackers. The FBI won't be able to devote so many resources to every ransomware attack. The FBI poured resources into the Colonial case because it was a high-profile attack that shut down a pipeline critical to the nation's economy. Still, this is unlikely to become the norm any time soon. The Justice Department said this was the first time that a task force devoted to ransomware has been able to claw back some of the money. The attackers are believed to be based in Russia. Attorney General Lisa Monaco, speaking on June 7, announces that the FBI has recovered most of the $4.4 million ransom that Colonial Pipeline paid to ransomware attackers last month.

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