"The company paid the hefty ransom in difficult-to-trace cryptocurrency within hours after the attack..."

I don't know why you got "untraceable" and I get "difficult to trace" when reading the article.

Bitcoin ain't exactly difficult to trace. I wonder if Colonial took the "discount" of 30% and paid in Monero or if they paid in Bitcoin.

Oh well it looks at least one company is going to give a bit more sh-t about its IT security ; )

And another thing: often these news are followed, a few weeks/months later by "How the hackers who got a $5m ransom from Colonial got caught".

Waiting for that one...