U.S. State Department Offers White Hat Hackers Up To $ 10 Million In Cryptocurrency Rewards August 17, 2021

The US authorities affords cryptocurrency rewards for data associated to the actions of state-sponsored hackers or suspected terrorists.

The US State Department’s new Rewards for Justice platform allows informants to anonymously submit suggestions and knowledge in alternate for rewards for digital property.

The platform was promoted on the Black Hat USA occasion, held July 31 via August 5 in Las Vegas, the place customers can submit suggestions over an unsecured WiFi community referred to as #Rewardsnotransoms. The open community was set as much as encourage attendees to log in and go to the RFJ web site, based on CNN.

Rewards of as much as $ 10 million are supplied in alternate for details about many government-sponsored terrorist suspects, extremists and hackers. The informants resolve whether or not they need to obtain compensation within the type of crypto property.

The informants ship delicate data through a safe portal on the darkish internet – the layer of the Internet that’s not publicly accessible to industrial corporations and search engines like google and yahoo.

Former director of the U.S. Counter-Espionage and National Security Center, William Evanina, described the initiative as essentially the most public foray by the U.S. authorities into crypto property ever made.

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Earlier this yr, the Biden administration accused each Russia and China of hackers of infiltrating numerous US authorities businesses and departments. In early June, U.S. officers raised about $ 2.3 million in cryptocurrency, which was used to pay ransom cash following a cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline system.

The RFJ program hopes to forestall any such assault by gathering data from hackers with the best abilities and data.

While the platform acquired suggestions, a State Department official confused that cyber enforcement operations “are not a quick process”.

“We take tips. We evaluate tips. We will share these tips with our interdisciplinary partners. Then they have to use that information and start the investigation, ”they stated.

Another official predicted that sooner or later this system would come with a precursor to comparable cybersecurity initiatives, stating:

“I believe this crypto incentive is one thing we’ll use for different kinds of rewards sooner or later. It can encourage different kinds of sources to return to us with data that folks might not need to have earlier than. “