In a disclosure that ought to shock nobody, the pinnacle honcho on the CIA has confirmed that the intelligence company has a number of tasks associated to cryptocurrency.

Rumors—usually not solely severe—have lengthy circulated that the nameless creators of flagship cryptocurrency bitcoin might have ties to the intelligence group, whereas a extra frequent sentiment amongst crypto followers is that the U.S. authorities is lurking within the background, ready to flex its muscle over the entire shebang. Yet, as flagged by Motherboard, on Monday CIA Director William Burns characterised the company’s involvement to attendees on the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Summit as comparatively current.

“This is something I inherited,” Burns informed the viewers. “My predecessor had started this, but had set in motion a number of different projects focused on cryptocurrency and trying to look at second- and third-order consequences as well and helping with our colleagues in other parts of the U.S. government to provide solid intelligence on what we’re seeing as well.”

That the CIA is is the other of surprising, no matter one thinks of the cryptocurrency world’s libertarian ethos. After all, cryptography, which the blockchain expertise that powers cryptocurrencies is predicated on, has at all times been of extreme interest to the army and intelligence group. It’s the important thing to each safeguarding one’s personal operations and gaining intelligence on adversaries. The prying eyes of the nation’s spies have little doubt been watching as cryptocurrency exploded from area of interest standing to a form of world-spanning, pseudo-anonymous shadow monetary community.

Internal National Security Agency documents from 2013 leaked by Edward Snowden confirmed that “tracking down” customers of bitcoin and different cryptos was one of many company’s high priorities, spurring some worries that NSA knowledge was secretly being utilized in prosecutions like that of Silk Road kingpin Ross Ulbricht (which the FBI has denied). Cryptocurrency is a beneficial software to actors the CIA could be serving to preserve observe of, such ransomware gangs able to inflicting chaos at giant establishments and concentrating on infrastructure—which are sometimes based abroad and generally suspected to be tied to nation-state actors. Ransomware is a sort of malware that maliciously encrypts file methods to be irrecoverable with out information of a particular cryptographic key, with the operator usually demanding the sufferer pay a ransom within the type of cryptocurrency to regain entry to the focused system.

For instance, a May 2021 cyberassault on the Colonial Pipeline managed to trigger fuel shortages and a minor panic throughout the Eastern Seaboard. The gang that contaminated the pipeline operator’s methods with ransomware is believed to be based in Russia. The assault was at the least partially the results of decades-long negligence on infrastructure cybersecurity the feds abruptly seem like paying much more consideration to. The U.S. army Cyber Command not too long ago disclosed that it has taken unspecified offensive action in opposition to ransomware gangs concentrating on U.S. firms, elevating some concern that it’s militarizing the response to cybercrime.

Burns particularly talked about ransomware throughout his remarks on the convention, saying cryptocurrency was one of many methods malicious actors which have in any other case hid their tracks may be recognized.

Cryptocurrency “could have enormous impact on everything from ransomware attacks, as you mentioned,” Burns informed the viewers. “Because one of the ways of getting at ransomware attacks and deterring them is to be able to get at the financial networks that so many of those criminal networks use and that gets right at the issue of digital currencies as well.”

As Motherboard famous, cryptocurrency aficionados on Twitter alerted to Burns’s feedback by a tweet from far-right monetary weblog ZeroHedge, a perennial font of alarmist takes and factually dubious information, took the chance to weigh in.

Most didn’t appear very involved. Crypto Cobain, a Twitter account with over 530,000 followers, tweeted a joke thread speculating what tasks might be CIA operations. Another bitcoin promoter named Spencer Schiff argued that if the CIA invented bitcoin, it wouldn’t severely influence his views on it, because the company has clearly misplaced management of it. Other Twitter customers used the remarks as fodder for jabs at crypto tasks they didn’t like, suggesting they have been CIA tasks. Just a few conspiracy-minded customers floated that concept that the CIA makes use of bitcoin or different digital currencies to fund black projects.