The U.S Department of Justice announced that over $500,000 worth of Bitcoin was seized by the FBI from hackers based out of North Korea.
“The seized funds include ransoms paid by healthcare providers in Kansas and Colorado,” the DoJ said in a press release issued Tuesday.
The healthcare providers paid ransoms of up to $100,000 and $120,000 which were ran through two cryptocurrency accounts. These accounts were then seized by the FBI.
The initial attacks were carried out by the use of Maui ransomware, a strain of ransomware which U.S. Cybersecurity and intelligence agencies called attention to earlier this month.
It is not known how the seizure was orchestrated but it could have been carried out by following the money laundering trails to a cryptocurrency exchange that offers cash-out services to convert their illicit proceeds from bitcoin to fiat currency.
This seizure comes at a time where the U.S. government has been increasingly successful in hunting down crypto ransomware payments.
The development also follows a notification from the FBI, which warned that threat actors are offering victims what appear to be investment services from legitimate companies to trick them into downloading rogue apps aimed at defrauding them.
