It would also explain the FBI "possession" of the Private Key to the Hackers Bitcoin Wallet"
Not so sure about that.
Occam's suggests Mandiant was contacted before the ransom was paid, and they, in conjunction with alphabets, poisoned the wallet.
"You want your money? Here is a ransom wallet and n/p." If you could root that and make the bad guy believe it was legit all the way to their blockchain transfer to their own wallet or attempt a transaction .... boom.
Instead of paying Yung Fat Heartattack, Colonial paid a fraction of that money to a serious US 3rd-party IT security team, who in addition to participating in poisoning the wallet, likely also built a new, secure network for Colonial.
Note that the alphabets also disgronified Darkside to the point where they have gone all-in on distributing these attacks now, rather than their prior piecemeal revenue stream approach, figuring not everyone can afford Mandiant or are mission-critical enough to pull alphabet weight.
However, we still have reached a tipping point where, instead of these stupid ransomware victims paying up because their water-brained IT guy panics, are now aware that the price point is much lower to have a small, state-of-the-art IT security team simply poison the wallet, while mirroring the network you had, with the security you were lacking.
However recent revalations of the Feds covertly supplying "totally secure" encrypted phones to numerous narco traffickers, human traffickers and selected terrorists points to the Feds being the instigators and the initiators of these high tech secure exploits.
Reminds me of Mossad covertly selling cellphones to al Qaeda Terrorists at bargain prices, ... I got a bang out of that.
Can you explain or point me in the right direction to understand “poison the wallet”?
I have never heard that term and can’t fathom what you mean by that.
Your post is replying to the original post so I am unable to get background and context to what you are talking about.