Cracking Down on Ransomware

What’s happening? Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has declared ransomware a threat to the economy. To lessen the threat, The Treasury Department is cracking down on cryptocurrency, the preferred payment method for ransomware hackers.

Why is this important? This year, the U.S. has seen  Colonial Pipeline and JBS USA choosing to pay ransoms. The Justice Department recovered the majority of the roughly $4.4 million in bitcoin paid to the hackers by Colonial.

How will this be important? States are making ransomware an explicit stand alone crime and state securities agencies are enforcing cryptocurrency bad actors, it’ll be a combination of federal and state enforcement.

The Hill | Treasury sanctions cryptocurrency exchange for facilitating ransomware payments