In one of the most stupid things to have been an “accident”, the private keys of sophisticated hax0r group DarkSide were left on a cloud server… the private keys to their $4.5 million in Bitcoin it was paid by Colonial Pipeline CEO in a ransomware attack that took down a huge percentage of US Southeast fuel supplies… so the FBI secured them, and didn’t need the help of Coinbase.
Or at least, that’s what authorities, the FBI, the US Department of Justice, and mainstream media are telling us. Well, I’m not biased and I’m not paid to say a single word that isn’t from my own independent thought — and this story smells like horse sh*t.
The FBI says that they recovered most of the millions of dollars paid in ransomware, but how in the hell did they get the private keys that gave them access to the wallets where DarkSide hackers “hid” their Bitcoin? Just how did they do that?
Coinbase Chief Security Officer (CEO) Philip Martin took to his personal Twitter to explain the situation, saying that Coinbase wasn’t involved in helping the DOJ or FBI secure the seized Bitcoin from the recent Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack. He simply said “We weren’t” and has a thread on Twitter all about it.
Martin quipped: “So how did they get the private key? Maybe some whiz-bang magic, but my guess would be it was some good ol’ fashioned police work to locate the target servers, and an MLAT request and/or some political pressure to get access“.