Biden Administration Hoping to Deflate Ransomware Groups’ Pocketbooks

Amid the continued upward trend in ransomware attacks, the U.S Treasury issued a bulletin this morning that begins proposed actions of levying sanctions against cryptocurrency exchanges, wallets, and traders utilized by ransomware groups. At the behest of the Biden Administration, today’s actions include the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control’s (OFAC) designation of SUEX OTC, S.R.O. (SUEX), a virtual currency exchange, for its part in facilitating financial transactions for ransomware actors. This action also includes an Updated Advisory on Potential Sanctions Risks for Facilitating Ransomware Payments. The administration hopes that by targeting the financial processes of ransomware gangs, they can disrupt and even diminish future attacks. Access to cryptocurrency is a requirement for any successful ransomware operation. After receiving the cryptocurrency from a victim, cybercriminals transfer it through mixers and then to crypto exchanges to make the currency harder to trace. Federal officials hope that by disrupting the economic incentives of ransomware attacks they can make it harder for these groups to operate. This is not the first attempt at sanctioning ransomware payments. In October 2020, the U.S. Treasury Department published an advisory warning that ransomware victims and others who facilitate ransomware payments to groups under U.S. sanctions could suffer penalties. Read more at BleepingComputer.