Study finds DarkSide victims paid about $90 million in Bitcoin

Elliptic analysts analysed 47 Bitcoin wallets believed to belong to the DarkSide hacking group. According to the study, over nine months the attackers received about $90 million in Bitcoin from victims.

According to analysts, the DarkSide malware compromised about 99 organisations. Nearly half of them paid the ransom, and the average payment was $1.9 million.

DarkSide operates on a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) model, providing its malware to third-party hackers.

Any ransom paid by the victim is split between the intruders and the software developers. In the case of DarkSide, the developer takes 25% for ransoms under $500,000, but this share decreases to 10% for ransoms above $5 million, according to Elliptic.

DarkSide attacked the American company Colonial Pipeline, stealing about 100 GB of data and locking computer systems.

According to media reports, Colonial Pipeline paid the attackers 75 BTC. This is corroborated by Elliptic’s data, which previously uncovered a Bitcoin wallet, allegedly used by DarkSide to receive the ransom from victims.

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