US Treasury ties $5.2 billion in Bitcoin transactions to ransomware payments

The financial crimes investigation unit of the US Treasury Department, also known as FinCEN has said today it’s identified $5.2 billion in transferred Bitcoin transactions tied to ransomware payments. FinCEN says these payments were identified between 2011 and 2021.

The initial SAR reports highlighted $1.56 billion in ransomware payments, a subsequent investigation by the FinCEN into the Top 10 most common ransomware variants exposed more transactions, amounting to approximately $5.2 billion just from these groups alone.

I would assume much more money has been transferred to cyber crooks, these transfers are just part of the Top 10 variants. There would also be more ransomware payments made in secret by organisations that have not exposed the hacker’s Bitcoin address.

Ransomware is a growing business, just one chink in an organisation’s armour could end up their worst nightmare, crippling operations, or held ransom by hacker’s unwilling to decrypt data or threatening to expose stolen data. Speak with us for assistance to remove such a threat.