Coinbase, one of the largest companies in cryptocurrency, revealed that at least 6000 of its customers had their funds stolen from their accounts as a result of a recent phishing campaign that saw the hacking of the SMS-based authentication feature the company used to secure many accounts.

News of the phishing campaign was first reported in August, but its scope and details only became clear after a letter the company sent to affected users began circulating.

In the message, Coinbase told that the hackers gained access to the email accounts of the victims, and then used those compromised accounts in order to drain the cryptocurrency from those users’ accounts.

Incident details:

As is well known, most cryptocurrency exchanges require for additional security the use of two-step verification, whether it is via an SMS or a two-factor authentication application.

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However, according to Coinbase, the failure of the SMS issuance feature enabled hackers to take advantage of the situation and thus gain access to users’ accounts.

Coinbase’s response:

According to Coinbase, it will compensate those who lost money as a result of the phishing attack, and it has already begun to compensate and recover users’ money.

The company did not disclose the total amount stolen by the hackers.

Some analysts said the incident did not amount to hacking because the hackers did not violate the company’s internal regulations.

Instead, the robberies occurred because customers got caught in phishing attacks that targeted their personal email, which is very common.

But it is unclear why Coinbase took so long to acknowledge the incidents that occurred over the period from March to May 2021.

According to a Coinbase spokesperson, the company did not want to bring law enforcement agencies into the case.

It appears that the attacks were global in nature, as Coinbase’s letter stated that it would provide credit monitoring services in the “country of residence”.

Coinbase also urged customers to switch to a more secure level of two-factor authentication such as an external device or a two-factor authentication app.

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Which is what we also always recommend in Arab Bitcoin the need to fortify the account by activating two-factor authentication:

How to enable two-factor authentication to protect your cryptocurrency

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