SamSam Exposes Bitcoin Addresses

SamSam Exposes Bitcoin Addresses

United States citizens have been banned from getting involved with two Bitcoin addresses by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets (OFAC). In a recent press release published yesterday, the OFAC has shown two men from Iran tied to ransomware scams.

For the first time in OFAC history, the department publicly announced the Bitcoin addresses and stated that “U.S. persons generally are prohibited from dealing with them.”

The two men in question were both allegedly responsible for exchanging ransom payments paid in Bitcoin into the fiat currency in Iran, Iranian Rial. the laundered currency comes from malicious cyber attacks who used the SamSam ransomware to steal 200 people’s funds.

Yesterday's’ announcement states that the OFAC has found two Bitcoin addresses known to be used by these two cyber criminals. The two addresses have been used to filter millions of Us dollars over more than seven thousand transactions since 2013.

SamSam

For those that don’t know, SamSam is a basic ransomware attack software where the hackers infect the victim's device in an attempt to gain administrator rights to the device and then they can proceed to steal all the information they wish from the hacked device. When the hackers get the data they need, they can use this information to threaten the victim with their data for a ransom.

In the announcement it states:

“Treasury is targeting digital currency exchangers who have enabled Iranian cyber actors to profit from extorting digital ransom payments from their victims. As Iran becomes increasingly isolated and desperate for access to U.S. dollars, it is vital that virtual currency exchanges, peer-to-peer exchanges, and other providers of digital currency services harden their networks against these illicit schemes… We are publishing digital currency addresses to identify illicit actors operating in the digital currency space. Treasury will aggressively pursue Iran and other rogue regimes attempting to exploit digital currencies and weaknesses in cyber and AML/CFT safeguards to further their nefarious objectives.”

As reported by CryptoGlobe, the Chief legal officer of the blockchain, Marco Santori took to Twitter to voice his opinion on the announcement.

What are your thoughts? Let us know what you think down below in the comments!

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