The largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States admitted to being exploited earlier this year when hackers stole assets from nearly 6,000 users. The company has pledged to compensate all affected users.
- According to a copy of the letter sent to the affected customers, which was available on the California attorney general’s website, the exploits occurred somewhere between March and May 20 this year.
- You read that an unauthorized third party has gained access to the accounts of at least 6000 Coinbase customers and drained an unknown amount of funds from there.
- The exchange explained that the security breach was made possible because the perpetrators “knew in advance the email address, password and phone number” associated with each account.
- The letter said Coinbase had failed to determine how “these third parties had access to this information.” She explained that these types of activities typically include phishing attacks or other social engineering techniques “to trick the victim into inadvertently revealing login credentials to a bad actor”.
- Although Coinbase emphasized that even if the offenders had access to the above information, they would still need additional authentication to gain access to the accounts. However, two-factor authentication through SMS texts has a flaw that they were able to exploit.
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“The third party took advantage of a flaw in the Coinbase SMS account recovery process in order to receive a two-factor authentication code via SMS and access your account.”
- In the end, the perpetrators managed to transfer funds from the hacked accounts.
- The exchange promised that it had updated its authentication and other security protocols. In addition, Coinbase pledged to deposit funds into the affected account “in the amount of the incorrectly removed coin” during the time of the incidents.
- Some clients have already received payment, while the rest must be completed “no later than today”.
- It should be noted that these incidents occurred around the same time that the giant stock exchange became a public joint stock company. Coinbase shares were launched for trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange in April of this year.
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