The payment came after hackers last week held up Colonial Pipeline’s business networks with ransomware, a form of malware that encrypts data until the victim pays, and threatened to release it online.
President Biden also declined to answer whether Colonial Pipeline had paid its extortionists in a press briefing on Thursday.
Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said in a separate briefing, “It’s the recommendation of the F.B.I.
DarkSide has tried to distance itself from politics.
Colonial has not shared many details about the incident, or why it was necessary to shut down the pipeline, which other operators sequester from their business operations for safety.
“This is an indicator of why we should pay,” the hackers, called Babuk, said in a post online.