Coinbase data leak: Employees under lens to have leaked user information
The US-based crypto exchange disclosed that it expects estimates from the data leak to be between $180 million and $400 million.
One of the world’s biggest crypto exchanges, Coinbase, on Thursday said user information was hacked after a subsidiary received an email from an unknown “threat actor” claiming to have obtained information about certain customer accounts.
In the email, the hacker demanded money in exchange for not publicly disclosing the information.
The company has since concluded that the email was credible and that some of its users’ information was compromised.
According to an exchange filing, the hacker had paid multiple contractors and employees that were working in support roles outside of the US to collect information from internal company systems to which they had access to as part of their job responsibilities.
However, the company had detected these attempts after noticing that these personnel were accessing data without any business. Upon this observation, the company terminated these employees and heightened its fraud monitoring protections and alerted customers whose information was potentially accessed.
Coinbase clarified that while it has not adhered to the demands of the hacker, the data hack is expected to cost the company between $180 million to $400 million relating to remediation costs and voluntary customer reimbursements related to the breach.
However, the full financial and operational impact of the leak is yet to be assessed, the company said.
The firm is also in the process of opening a new support hub in the US.
Coinbase is one of the few crypto exchanges that recently secured registration with India’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) which allowed the company to offer its crypto trading services in India. The data hack comes about two months after their launch in the country as the ecosystem is still reeling from a hack that toppled Indian exchange, WazirX, last year.
Edited by Jyoti Narayan