The criminals behind the global ransomware cyber attack that targeted over 100 countries have managed to raise just $20,000, according to experts working with investigators.
Tom Robinson, co-founder of Elliptic, a company that identifies illicit activity involving bitcoin and provides services to most major law enforcement agencies in the US and UK, told Guardian that at least three bitcoin addresses have been identified as being associated with the malware used in Friday’s worldwide attack.
State agencies and major companies around the world were left reeling by the attacks which blocked access to files and demanded ransom money, forcing them to shut down their computer systems. The attackers asked for payment in in Bitcoin.
“In terms of identifying the attacker, what we can see at the moment is that around $20,000 worth of ransoms have been paid to these addresses,” he said.
“There are actually two versions of this malware, there was one that appeared in April and we’ve identified one bitcoin address associated with that, and there’s a second version which appeared on Friday and we’ve identified three bitcoin addresses associated with that,” he was quoted as saying by the Guardian.
He said bitcoin users are not anonymous. Every bitcoin transaction is recorded in the public database known as the blockchain. Mr Robinson said: “What we don’t have recorded are any identities, so we can see that bitcoins are going from address one to address two, but we don’t know who controls those addresses by default.” The attacks hit a whole range of organisations and businesses worldwide.
