U.S. authorities recouped mostly of the Colonial Pipeline's payments to the hackers who are behind the ransomware attack at their company. The seizure of payments is a result of a law-enforcement operation that officials said showed progress in curbing the ability of criminals to disturb the American commerce and critical infrastructure for their profit, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

It can be recalled that the hacking incident Colonial Pipeline faced prompted shut down of the company, and panic buying from people on the eastern coast of the United States. More than 1,000 stations experienced a gas shortage, making the states of Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida, declare a state of emergency.

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U.S. Seizes Most of the Ransomware Payments to the Colonial Pipeline Hackers

The investigators recovered at least 64 Bitcoins, with the value of $2.3 million from a virtual wallet. Bloomberg noted that originally, the Colonial Pipeline paid at least 75 Bitcoins, but because of the declining value of the cryptocurrency, U.S. authorities were only able to recover over half of the total of $4.4 million.

The recuperation of Colonial Pipeline's payments stemmed out when investigators acquired a seizure warrant from a magistrate in Northern California on Monday. This allowed the authorities to capture the bitcoin from the virtual wallet that linked to the group of hackers that victimized Colonial Pipeline. Furthermore, the seizure warrant released by the Justice Department revealed that the FBI was able to locate the Bitcoins through uncovering the digital addresses the hackers utilized to transfer the funds.

However, it turned out that Colonial Pipeline is not the only victim of the hackers who attacked the company, forcing them to shut down.

Deputy Director Paul Abbate confirmed with the Justice Department that the investigators discovered more than 90 companies victimized by DarkSide, the group of hackers from Russia that is blamed for the Colonial Pipeline attack. The said companies that were victimized by DarkSide came from different sectors such as critical infrastructure, manufacturing, healthcare, legal, insurance, and energy.

U.S. Energy Secretary Backs the Ban on Ransomware Payments

Colonial Pipeline Chief Executive Officer Joseph Blount confirmed with Wall Street Journal that their company paid $4.4 million to DarkSide. Blount furthered that the movement was done because the executives were unsure how badly the cyberattack breached their system.

Despite the risk hackers like DarkSide pose to certain companies, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said on Sunday that she will support a law that would ban companies from paying ransom to hackers holding their information hostage. Granholm warned that paying the hackers would "embolden" them, according to an NBC News report.

"They should not be paying ransomware, but they should be letting us know so we can protect the rest of the country," said Granholm. The energy secretary also noted that "everyone" needs to level up in protecting themselves, as well as telling the authorities that they are a target of the attacks.

Despite what happened with what DarkSide caused, President Joe Biden and other officials said that there is no evidence that the Russian government was involved in the Colonial Pipeline attack. However, President Biden slammed Russian President Vladimir Putin for allowing criminal hackers to target the United States. The president is scheduled to address the ransomware attack with President Putin at the summit in Geneva on June 16.

WATCH: U.S. recovers millions in Bitcoin paid in Colonial Pipeline ransom - from CBS Evening News