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Coinbase says hackers bribed staff to steal customer data, demanding $20M ransom

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Re: Coinbase says hackers bribed staff to steal customer data, demanding $20M ransom

#211

Post by reaperducer »

thepasswordis wrote: post #184
lovich wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watching crypto enthusiasts run into every problem that society already tackled with in the past when developing currency and its controls, and then coming up with solutions that look exactly the same as what dirty fiat currency uses, has been a source of much entertainment the past few years

Is there anything crypto does that paper currency doesn’t?

Is there anything crypto does that paper currency doesn’t?

Gets you the equivalent of mugged by people on the other side of the planet?

At least with cash, it's a one-on-one involuntary transaction.

Re: Coinbase says hackers bribed staff to steal customer data, demanding $20M ransom

#212

Post by Kiro »

ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #183
aianus wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who else would verify the user passports if not the customer support staff? Who verifies (and photocopies! in Asia and Europe) your passport at a hotel or car rental office?

When was the last time your passport was copied in Europe? I don't think that this is still legal under the GDPR.

All KYC processes require copying in Europe. There's nothing that's blanket illegal under GDPR. If you have consent you can collect and store whatever you want.

Re: Coinbase says hackers bribed staff to steal customer data, demanding $20M ransom

#213

Post by wmf »

voidspark wrote: post #177
TheAmazingRace wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they need exchanges to get real money to flow in and out of cryptocurrency easily. Without it, cryptocurrency by itself would likely be worth far less than it is today.

Yes that's true, but no need to hold your crypto there as a permanent storage. Once your fiat is exchanged to crypto, immediately transfer the crypto to your private wallet.

This just trades the unsolved exchange hacking problem for the unsolved lost/stolen keys problem.

Re: Coinbase says hackers bribed staff to steal customer data, demanding $20M ransom

#214

Post by goobie »

ryuhhnn wrote: post #133
molticrystal wrote: post #121

And the reason Coinbase has to keep all that sensitive stuff, much more than what would be required to identify and authenticate you, which you hope will never be stolen, is because of know your customer laws, so you can thank your government that pictures of your passport got stolen and for whatever criminals and rogue Coinbase employees do with that info.

There are very good reasons for KYC, the problem here is not the government regulation, it's once again private companies being sloppy with their customer's data because sloppy is cheap and it's not their info on the line, it's yours, so there's little motivation for them to safeguard it _unless_ they're compelled to do it by law.

The people who designed a government regulation to deputize private companies couldn't possibly have known how sloppy private companies are with other people's data?

They could have designed KYC to minimize long-term storage requirements etc at some cost to what they could enforce, but a government like the US is inherently sloppy with the rights that are reserved for parties besides itself.

Re: Coinbase says hackers bribed staff to steal customer data, demanding $20M ransom

#215

Post by zamadatix »

panarky wrote: post #194
modeless wrote: post #179

I have been receiving regular spear phishing calls from these guys, or someone who bought the leaked data, with classic tactics like claiming that I need to confirm a potentially fraudulent transaction. They speak perfect English with an American accent, sound very friendly, and have knowledge of your account balance. Thankfully on the first call I realized it was a scam right away, and Google's call screening featur…

If you had any significant assets on Coinbase at any time prior to this breach, spear phishing is the least of your worries. Coinbase not only leaked your full name and address, they also gave up your balances, your transaction history, and images of your government identification. People with "significant" crypto balances are being assaulted on the street and in their own homes, and family members are being kidnappe…

> People with "significant" crypto balances are being assaulted on the street and in their own homes, and family members are being kidnapped for ransom. "Significant" in this case can be $10k or less.

I wonder why, select a person completely at random and by median you'll get just as much from what they have sitting in their checking account. Select a nicer area for an order of magnitude more. That's not encouragement to go assault people in their homes or kidnap families... just confusion.

Re: Coinbase says hackers bribed staff to steal customer data, demanding $20M ransom

#216

Post by [deleted] »

krunck wrote: post #207
panarky wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had any significant assets on Coinbase at any time prior to this breach, spear phishing is the least of your worries. Coinbase not only leaked your full name and address, they also gave up your balances, your transaction history, and images of your government identification. People with "significant" crypto balances are being assaulted on the street and in their own homes, and family members are being kidnappe…

But hey, at least by being forced to give crypto exchanges all our personal details we're all super protected from the four horsemen: money laundering, drugs, terrorism and pornography.

[deleted]

Re: Coinbase says hackers bribed staff to steal customer data, demanding $20M ransom

#217

Post by suzzer99 »

knowitnone wrote: post #189
SimianSci wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Crypto industry continues their speedrun of rediscovering all of the reasons for why the global financial system exists. What you've described is the same thing that many Crypto enthusiasts call a "Bank"

except banks staff can easily be bribed too. There is plenty of bank fraud happening.

If my bank money gets stolen from me via fraud (unless I literally just Zelle the scammer), I get it back. That's the big difference.

Re: Coinbase says hackers bribed staff to steal customer data, demanding $20M ransom

#218

Post by J0nL »

neilv wrote: post #17

The article keeps saying overseas employees or contractors, but isn't more specific on who Coinbase entrusted with this sensitive customer PII. The bottom line is Coinbase didn't adequately secure sensitive customer information, and it was leaked. Not, "Gosh, 'overseas' people, what can ya do?"

The odds are already against their future viability after a breach like this and if they're fumbling the response this bad it really doesn't bode well for them.

They would have been better off not even bringing up their location if they weren't going to be transparent.

Re: Coinbase says hackers bribed staff to steal customer data, demanding $20M ransom

#219

Post by codedokode »

lovich wrote: post #148
piva00 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What coinbase needs are IRL offices where you can go and do things like account recovery, and where people trying to steal money can be caught and prosecuted (and makes a huge barrier for the overseas thieves who are usually doing this) That's just a bank.

Watching crypto enthusiasts run into every problem that society already tackled with in the past when developing currency and its controls, and then coming up with solutions that look exactly the same as what dirty fiat currency uses, has been a source of much entertainment the past few years

As I understand, the root of the problem is that Coinbase kept lot of sensitive information, including photos of IDs. If Coinbase was fully anonymous, and didn't require any KYC, the impact of the leak would be insignificant because it would be difficult to link user number 12345 with some real-world person.

So if we want to constrain impact of such attacks, we must make companies keep less data and delete them faster. For example, instead of storing a photo of ID, store just a checkbox that the person showed their ID and it was valid.

This applies not only to cryptocurrency, but to any company like Google, Uber, Amazon etc - if they didn't keep extra data, there would be little value in the leaks.

So the blame is not at cryptocurrency, but on companies not wishing to delete the data and governments demanding them to collect the data not necessary for operation. It's the government and capitalists who create problems out of nowhere.

Re: Coinbase says hackers bribed staff to steal customer data, demanding $20M ransom

#220

Post by johnisgood »

lovich wrote: post #148
piva00 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What coinbase needs are IRL offices where you can go and do things like account recovery, and where people trying to steal money can be caught and prosecuted (and makes a huge barrier for the overseas thieves who are usually doing this) That's just a bank.

Watching crypto enthusiasts run into every problem that society already tackled with in the past when developing currency and its controls, and then coming up with solutions that look exactly the same as what dirty fiat currency uses, has been a source of much entertainment the past few years

As others have said, it has nothing to do with crypto, it is an exchange problem, and a government intervention problem.
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