Coinbase offers $20 million bounty on data thieves who tried to extort exchange
Quick Take
- Cyber criminals tried to extort $20 million from Coinbase to keep stolen customer data off the internet.
- The crypto exchange has now reportedly put out a bounty worth the same amount on the culprits.
Coinbase is offering a $20 million bounty reward for information that leads to the identification and conviction of bad actors who tried to blackmail the company over stolen user records.
The firm noted in a blog post that criminals obtained account data for less than 1% of Coinbase's monthly users from overseas support agents with cash offers.
The scammers then demanded $20 million in Bitcoin from Coinbase to hide the breach. The extortion perpetrators demanded that Coinbase either pay up or the hackers would leak sensitive customer details online, including names, addresses, and government IDs.
"No passwords, private keys, or funds were exposed, and Coinbase Prime accounts are untouched," the crypto exchange said.
Rather than paying the ransom, Coinbase has opened a $20 million bounty on the extortionists. The company also said it has engaged law enforcement on the matter and pledged to reimburse affected users.
This comes amid ongoing social engineering scams against Coinbase customers in recent months. Several Coinbase users have suffered millions in losses due to scammers acting as customer service representatives, according to an investigation by onchain sleuth ZachXBT.
In 2022, Coinbase also ran a bounty program after an extortion attempt.
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