US offers $10m bounty for Colonial Pipeline hackers

The United States government has offered a bounty of up to $10million (£7.4m) for information about the hacking group known as DarkSide.

In May, a DarkSide ransomware attack shut down a vital 5,500-mile-long fuel pipeline on the east coast of the US.

The pipeline carries 45% of the fuel used on the east coast.

The bounty is offered for information which can lead to the "identification or location of any individuals" in a leadership position with DarkSide.

A separate $5m reward has been offered for information leading to the arrest of anybody "conspiring to participate" in a DarkSide ransomware attack.

The cyber-attack caused fuel shortages after the Colonial Pipeline company shut down its operations for several days.

It eventually paid the $4.4m ransom in Bitcoin.

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Crypto-currency analysis company Elliptic estimated that DarkSide had received at least $90m in ransom payments from 47 victims.

However, US authorities later said 63.7 Bitcoin, the majority of the ransom paid by Colonial Pipeline, had been recovered.