FinCEN reports a rise in ransomware activity notices in 2021

In the first six months of 2021, exchanges and other institutions submitted to FinCEN 635 suspicious-activity reports related to ransom payments to ransomware operators. They contained information on transactions totaling $590 million, higher than for all of 2020.

“The aggregate value of suspicious transactions reported in SARs related to ransomware in the first six months amounted to $590 million, exceeding the total transactions reported in 2020 ($416 million),” the FinCEN report states.

The document does not specify what portion of the amount was attributable to cryptocurrencies. However, the agency called Bitcoin the “most common” method of payment and noted that the number of incidents involving Monero (XMR) and other privacy-focused assets “has grown only slightly compared with 2020.”

Experts also stressed that perpetrators continue to cash out through centralized cryptocurrency exchanges that are unregulated or operate in jurisdictions that do not require compliance with KYC requirements.

FinCEN’s methodology notes that of the 635 SARs filed from January 1 to June 30, only 458 report transactions that occurred in the period under review. Their total value amounted to $398 million.

According to the service Ransomwhere, which tracks cryptocurrency payments to ransomware operators based on user reports, ransomware operators collected around $51.5 million.

In September, media reported that the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden was preparing a package of measures, aimed at countering cryptocurrency payments to hackers, who are behind attacks by such malware.

Earlier, Maggie Hassan, a member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, sent a letter to several agencies expressing concerns about the use of cryptocurrency to pay ransoms to ransomware programs.

Among the addressees are the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, the Internal Revenue Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

As reported, President Biden sees monitoring cryptocurrency transactions as one of the possible tools in the fight against ransomware. By tracking the ransoms paid by victims of attacks, the White House aims to disrupt operators of the malware from using digital assets. 

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