The largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States provides that a cyber attack that has violated the account data of a “small subset” of its customers would cost it between $ 180 and $ 400 million. Coinbase said the price would not include the ransom of $ 20 million requested by the pirates, which the company refused to pay.
Coinbase, which sees the largest volume of cryptocurrency transactions in the United States, said that if the attackers have stolen certain data, including names, addresses and emails, they did not have access to identification or password information. However, he will reimburse customers who have been led to send funds to attackers.
The pirates had paid several entrepreneurs and employees working in assistance roles outside the United States to collect information from internal systems. Coinbase immediately dismissed the employees involved, he said.
He also refuses to pay the ransom request of $ 20 million and works with law enforcement organizations. Rather, he has established a reward of $ 20 million for information on attackers.
“Instead of funding criminal activities, we have investigated the incident, strengthened our checks and will reimburse customers affected by this incident,” said the company in a blog.
The company said it received an e-mail from an unknown threat player on May 11, saying that it has information on certain customer accounts as well as internal documents. The disclosure comes a few days before Coinbase was about to join the S&P 500 reference index, marking a historic moment for the crypto industry.
Security remains a challenge for cryptographic industry. In February, Bybit, the second largest exchange of cryptocurrency in the world by exchanging a volume, revealed that the attackers had stolen digital tokens worth around 1.5 billion dollars, which called the largest crispo of all time.
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The stolen funds by hacking cryptographic platforms totaled $ 2.2 billion in 2024, according to a report by the Chainalysis blockchain analysis company, the fourth consecutive year during which these hacks exceeded more than $ 1 billion.
