Experts from the Elliptic company analyzed ransom payments made by the ransomware group DarkSide on 47 different bitcoin wallets. Since October 2020, cybercriminals have earned just over $ 90 million.
About 10% of the profits were made in one week after attacks by just two companies: the American fuel giant Colonial Pipeline and the large German chemical company Brenntag. The attacks on the Colonial Pipeline and Brenntag brought cybercriminals a total of about $ 10 million. The first company paid almost $ 5 million, and the second – $ 4.4 million.
Over the past three months, the group has been able to earn $ 17.5 million, which is about 20% of the total profit.
According to experts from DarkTracer, the total number of victims of DarkSide is 99 companies and organizations, but this number may be slightly higher. The day before the announcement of the cessation of criminal activity, DarkSide attacked another 59 victims.
Because the perpetrators operated on a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) business model, DarkSide’s profits were split between malware developers and partners who hacked victim networks, stole data, and installed malware to encrypt files. DarkSide partners received from 75% to 90% of the profit, depending on the size of the ransom.
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