On May 15, Coinbase revealed that criminals had stolen personal data from tens of thousands of customers—the biggest security incident in the company’s history, and one that is poised to cost it as much as $400 million. The breach is notable not only for its scale, but the way the hackers went about it: bribing overseas customer support agents to share confidential customer records.
Coinbase has responded by publicly announcing it had put a $20 million bounty on those who stole the data, and who sought to blackmail the company so as not to reveal the incident. But it has shared few details about who carried out the attack or how the hackers were able to target its agents so successfully.
