Binance,$BNB Kraken Thwarted Social Engineering Attacks Similar to Coinbase Hack
Attackers allegedly attempted bribing customer support agents, but Binance and Kraken's internal infrastructure blocked the efforts
Binance$BNB
and Kraken allegedly thwarted social engineering attacks identical to the ones responsible for the recent Coinbase breach.
Efforts included bribes to customer care agents and were tracked to Telegram handles
Binance and Kraken, two of the largest cryptocurrency $ETH exchanges globally, were recently subject to a wave of social engineering attacks of the same nature that caused a huge data breach at Coinbase.
Hackers reported to customer support staff with bribery attempts and step-by-step guidance on how to contact attackers via Telegram, reports Bloomberg. Both exchanges were able to block the attempts without compromising any customer data. The exchanges were hit with strategies similar to those employed against Coinbase (COIN), which disclosed it expects to spend $180 million to $400 million on remediation expenses and customer refunds after attackers gained access to their personal data.
At Binance, internal controls such as artificial intelligence chatbots assisted in catching bribery-related messages, ending conversations before they got out of hand. Access restrictions on customer data until users themselves make the first contact also assisted in reducing risk.
Coinbase's supposedly began noticing irregular activity back in January, and last December, competing exchanges had already been alerting the company to irregular activity against its biggest customers.