CIA Confirms Working on Crypto Projects: Report

The CIA confirms that it is working on crypto projects and putting an end to the rumors as Director William Burns noted, so let’s find out more in today’s crypto news.

CIA Director William Burns was asked about the CIA‘s involvement in combating ransomware attacks. He said that his predecessor started several different projects based on cryptocurrencies. Of course, hundreds of conspiracy theories pop up on social media, some of which claim that Tom Hanks is a pedophile boss, the CIA invented bitcoin, etc. However, in the end it turns out that the CIA is also involved in cryptocurrencies but they have bitcoin not invented.

During the Wall Avenue Journal’s CEO Summit, CIA Director William Burns admitted that the agency has several projects aimed at tracking cryptocurrencies. When asked if the agency could contain ransomware attacks from abroad, Burns said his predecessor had launched many crypto-centric projects and tried to account for the aftermath of Monday and Tuesday while helping colleagues in other parts of the US government To provide information about what they see.

Ransomware is a type of malware designed to shut down a computer or network until payment is received, often used in Monero in the form of a privacy coin or Bitcoin. This year’s attacks paralyzed the major oil pipeline Colonial Pipeline, carpet processing giant JBS and corporate IT infrastructure. The Biden administration has made ransomware a “priority” and announced that it will use cryptocurrency tracking to fix this. Burns doesn’t say much about the predecessor he is referring to, but the hypothesis relies on David Cohen. Cohen was selected as acting director by President Biden from January to March because he had previously worked in the Treasury Department overseeing the Office of Foreign Assets Control and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

Michael Morell served twice as acting director of the agency under President Obama, recognizing the value of BTC to the intelligence community and calling blockchain technology a “surveillance blessing” in a report. The report also defends the cryptocurrency against claims that its best use case is for criminal firms, but the overt nature of the raids makes it an unproven forensic tool.

Burns is vague about what the CIA is actually doing, but says apparently confirmed to be working on crypto projects:

“One of the ways to stop and stop ransomware attacks is to access the financial networks that many of these criminal networks use, and that goes along with the digital currency issue.”