[Cryptography] In the latest unexpected ransomware twist ...

[John Levine]

It appears that Phillip Hallam-Baker <phill at hallambaker.com> said:
>> >  payment, had been transferred to a specific address, for which the FBI
>> >  has the “private key,”

>We can exclude some possibilities. It certainly wasn't a big enough win for
>Feds to use cryptanalysis of the wallet public key.

If they can break the elliptic curve cryptography that bitcoin uses, we've got bigger issues.

>It seems unlikely that they would have an undercover agent in the group
>either. ...
>
>So that pretty much requires us to focus on endpoint compromise.

Possibly, or see the news earlier today reporting that the FBI
controlled a popular darknet "secure" communication app. The FBI is
more technically sophisticated than a lot of us give them credit for,
and when the adversaries are outside the U.S., they presumably also
get help from the NSA.

R's,
John