DarkSide — False Flag Attack?

TLDR; No.

Yesterday the FBI announced that they were able to seize $2.3M of the ransom paid by Colonial pipeline to the hacker group DarkSide.

They were able to do this by accessing the Bitcoin wallet which was presumably on Coinbase.

The internet immediately responded with calls of FUD and false flags.

How would an elite hacking group make such a silly mistake?

DarkSide has an affiliate program anyone can sign up for.

DarkSide takes 10–25%

Affiliates are generally low-level script kiddies who don’t have the best security skills.

The affiliate got popped, not DarkSide

Notice how they didn’t recover all the funds?

Is DarkSide an elite hacking group?

Yes, well…kind of

DarkSide is a cybercrime enterprise, they are a company.

They aren’t ‘elite’. There are no zero-days involved or fancy’s hacking attacks.

DarkSide is good at what they do, and what they do is ransomware.