The Russian hackers recently indicted for their attacks attacks against anti-doping agencies and others were funding their work through bitcoin mining, according to U.S. documents. “The conspirators used the same funding structure – and in some cases, the very same pool of funds – to purchase key accounts, servers, and domains used in their anti-doping related hacking activity,” read their indictment. The US Department of Justice has now added charges for the “[conspiracy] to launder money through a web of transactions structured to capitalize on the perceived anonymity of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.” And while the attempts to maintain anonymity were not successful, the hacks largely were. In one instance, the group stole medical information of 250 athletes, changed the information, and then re-released them to “damage the reputations of clean athletes from various countries by falsely claiming that such athletes were using banned or performance-enhancing drugs.”
Source: Russian government hackers mined bitcoin to fund attacks on FIFA, anti-doping agencies
