The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has started an investigation into a significant infringement of Coinbase safety, the largest American cryptocurrency exchange.
According to sources that are familiar with the issue quoted By Bloomberg, the DOJ’s criminal division in Washington is investigating the conditions surrounding the infringement, which has expressed serious concern about cyber security in the crypto sector.
Coinbase works together with Doj in the midst of large data breach
Coinbase revealed that the infringement of criminal actors involved employees and contractors in India was involved to gain access to sensitive customer data. Paul Grewal, Chief Legal Officer of Coinbase, stated:
We have informed and work together with the Doj and other American and international law enforcement agencies and welcome the pursuit of criminal charges against these bad actors.
It is important that the Exchange CLO clarified that although Coinbase itself is not being investigated, the Doj is aimed at the criminals involved in the infringement.
The incident came to light for the first time when on 11 May Coinbase received an e -mail from a non -ignored threat actor and claims to possess information about certain customer accounts in addition to internal documents. The company anticipates losses ranging from $ 180 million to $ 400 million due to the cyber attack.
$ 20 million remuneration fund after rejecting ransom
While the attackers succeeded in stealing some data, including names, addresses and e -mail addresses, the exchange confirmed that login details and passwords were not affected.
In one rack On 15 May, Coinbase insured users via social media platform X (formerly Twitter) that it would not collapse for the requirements of the attackers. The criminals had requested a ransom of $ 20 million.
Instead of paying the ransom, Coinbase announced the establishment of a $ 20 million reward fund aimed at encouraging information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the attack.
At the end of the trade on Monday, the shares of the company (Munt) acted at $ 263.
Featured image of Dall-E, graph of TradingView.com