On May 15, digital currency exchange Coinbase said hackers bribed a group of exchange employees to steal user information to appropriate digital currency, then blackmailed the platform to keep the incident quiet.
In an official blog post, San Francisco, California-based Coinbase said hackers bribed a group of its foreign customer support staff to act as insiders to steal user data from the platform and carry out social engineering attacks.
“Social engineering” is a term used by hackers to describe the manipulation of human psychology in order to gain access to sensitive information, systems, and digital assets.
Hackers used access to the customer support system to steal account data from a small group of users.
According to Coinbase, hackers collected information including phone numbers, email addresses, and partial social security numbers of about 1% of the exchange's monthly active users.
The hackers' goal was to build a list of users to impersonate Coinbase, tricking victims into handing over digital currency.
Coinbase said it received an anonymous email on May 11 revealing leaked internal information and demanding a $20 million ransom to keep it secret.
Coinbase has denied the claims and proactively reported the incident to US regulators, and plans to spend between $180-400 million to compensate victims and remedy the consequences.
The exchange announced a $20 million reward for anyone who provides information that leads to the arrest and conviction of those behind the attack. Coinbase has fired the entire team of employees involved in the data breach and strengthened its fraud monitoring systems./.
Source: https://www.vietnamplus.vn/san-giao-dich-coinbase-doi-mat-thiet-hai-400-trieu-usd-do-ro-ri-du-lieu-post1038884.vnp
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