Coinbase, the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency change, was hit by a $20 million extortion try after cybercriminals recruited abroad assist brokers to leak person knowledge, the corporate mentioned.
According to a Could 15 weblog put up, Coinbase mentioned a bunch of exterior actors bribed and coordinated with a number of buyer assist contractors to entry inside programs and steal restricted person account knowledge.
“These insiders abused their entry to buyer assist programs to steal the account knowledge for a small subset of consumers,” Coinbase mentioned, including that no passwords, non-public keys, funds or Coinbase Prime accounts had been affected.
Lower than 1% of Coinbase’s month-to-month transacting customers’ knowledge was affected by the attack, the corporate mentioned.
After stealing the information, the attackers tried to extort $20 million price of Bitcoin (BTC) from Coinbase in change for not disclosing the breach. Coinbase refused the demand.
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As a substitute, the corporate provided a $20 million reward for data resulting in the arrest and conviction of these accountable for the scheme.
Scammers usually masquerade as recognizable manufacturers to encourage a false sense of belief of their victims.
In 2024, Coinbase was the most impersonated cryptocurrency model by scammers.
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Coinbase will reimburse phishing attack victims
Coinbase mentioned it can reimburse customers who had been tricked into sending cryptocurrency to phishing scammers, with anticipated remediation and reimbursement bills starting from $180 million to $400 million.
The crypto change disclosed the estimate in an 8-Okay submitting with the US Securities and Change Fee on Could 15, noting the bills relate to “voluntary buyer reimbursements” and different remediation efforts.
The attackers have been approaching the change’s abroad buyer assist brokers for months, aiming to “bribe” them in change for buyer data, mentioned Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong in a Could 15 X post.
Following the attack, the change will strengthen its inside knowledge administration processes and relocate a few of its buyer assist operations to keep away from related incidents.
Social engineering schemes are a rising concern for Coinbase customers. Blockchain safety analyst ZachXBT estimated that users lost around $45 million to phishing schemes within the week main as much as Could 7.
The blockchain safety analyst beforehand claimed that social engineering scams value Coinbase customers over $300 million annually, Cointelegraph reported on Feb. 4.
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Cointelegraph by Zoltan Vardai Coinbase faces $400M bill after insider phishing attack cointelegraph.com 2025-05-15 11:36:03
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