U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said that the Justice Department's high-level disruption and prosecution of ransomware operations and cybercriminals will continue this year following a significant number of takedowns last year, reports The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.
Illicit cryptocurrency operations supporting malicious cyber operations are also being continuously targeted by the Justice Department after investigating and indicting major cryptocurrency exchange Binance for crypto laundering last year, said Monaco at the Munich Cyber Security Conference. "The lifeblood of the ransomware ecosystem is crypto. So we're going after that lifeblood, following the money and taking it back and also disrupting the ecosystem that fuels it. Monaco's pronouncements come after the DOJ and FBI disrupted the Moobot botnet leveraged by Russian state-sponsored threat operation APT28, also known as BlueDelta and Fancy Bear, as well as another botnet operated by Chinese state-backed hacking operation Volt Typhoon.
Illicit cryptocurrency operations supporting malicious cyber operations are also being continuously targeted by the Justice Department after investigating and indicting major cryptocurrency exchange Binance for crypto laundering last year, said Monaco at the Munich Cyber Security Conference. "The lifeblood of the ransomware ecosystem is crypto. So we're going after that lifeblood, following the money and taking it back and also disrupting the ecosystem that fuels it. Monaco's pronouncements come after the DOJ and FBI disrupted the Moobot botnet leveraged by Russian state-sponsored threat operation APT28, also known as BlueDelta and Fancy Bear, as well as another botnet operated by Chinese state-backed hacking operation Volt Typhoon.
