Coinbase Data Breach: Brian Armstrong Offers $20 Million Bounty for Intel on Attackers

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has publicly replied to cyber attackers who attempted to blackmail the cryptocurrency commerce and extort it of $20 million.

Armstrong’s most modern put up on X has a 2-minute 44-2nd video of him rejecting the attackers’ discount and providing the same reward to someone with knowledge main to their arrest and conviction.

Attackers Demanded Bitcoin Ransom After Restricted Knowledge Breach

Constant with Armstrong, the attackers sent Coinbase an electronic mail annoying a $20 million ransom in Bitcoin. They claimed paying the ransom will likely be the superb manner to quit them from releasing users’ knowledge they had illegally received.

Highlighting Coinbase’s model of transparent operation, Armstrong addressed the venture publicly, emphasizing the crypto commerce’s resolution no longer to pay ransom. The Coinbase CEO outlined the firm’s proactive reach, noting the rapid steps taken to examine the venture and neutralize the attackers’ threats.

Breach Alive to In but any other nation Enhance Agents, Restricted Particular person Knowledge Exposed

Coinbase’s interior investigation into the security pains chanced on that the attackers won salvage real of entry to to no longer up to 1% of users’ knowledge with the abet of one or more foreign toughen brokers.

Constant with Armstrong, the cybercriminals sought a frail hyperlink among the many foreign brokers, someone who would salvage a bribe in commerce for sharing some customer knowledge.

Despite the breach, Armstrong downplayed the security affect by highlighting the slight knowledge toughen brokers can salvage real of entry to on the Coinbase platform. He assured the public that the attackers did no longer produce extreme knowledge bask in passwords or non-public keys. They might most productive retrieve less extreme knowledge bask in names, addresses, and users’ dates of birth.

Coinbase Pledges Repayment, Security Upgrades, $20M Bounty

Meanwhile, Armstrong cited the attackers’ doable to make exercise of the retrieved knowledge to conduct social engineering assaults in a secondary heist. He regretted the actions of the “few unfavorable apples” at some level of the Coinbase global workforce but promised to reimburse potentialities who fell sufferer to social engineering as a outcome of the incident.

Armstrong told the public about Coinbase’s effort to toughen its security and quit a repeat of such breaches, alongside with relocating about a of its customer toughen operations. As an different of paying a ransom, Coinbase has issued a $20 million reward for knowledge that can lead to the arrest and conviction of the attackers.