Hacker demands ransom for personal data of clients

Binance is a world famous Chinese cryptocurrency exchange founded by Changpeng Zhao. The digital project has been offering users various tools for working in the stock market for more than two years, and during all this time the platform has repeatedly been subjected to attempts at hacker attacks. So one of the last and most large-scale operations to hack a resource took place in March 2018. It was not crowned with success, however, the damage to the service customers was still caused.

In connection with these events, the marketplace decided to compensate for all losses caused to users whose personal information was stolen during the Know Your Customer (KYC) operation and later published on the Internet by an unknown cyber fraudster. It is worth noting that many financial exchanges provide for the indication of these personal data and photographs in order to confirm the identity of the client of the system, and the Binance cryptocurrency exchange is no exception. During the procedure, classified information was stolen and published by an unknown attacker, and therefore the administration of the resource decided to provide the victims with lifelong privileges, namely to assign them a VIP status.

Compensation for damage

After the incident, the site expressed gratitude to its users and noted the fact that the specialists began to actively work to improve the security service of the exchange. Employees of the department for combating cyber-thieves have already begun to analyze the current situation and look for possible leaks. Also, the project managers made it clear that everyone who suffered from the attempted theft has every right to compensation. VIP accounts provide their clients with advanced features in the cryptocurrency platform system:

    preferential commission rates;
    regular technical support;
    preferential trading fees;
    Additional services.

All these bonuses are valid for the account owner on a permanent basis and for life, which gives a lot of benefits for the future.
 

Other compensation options

The marketplace also reports that it is trying to establish communication with each potential affected user. All victims are informed about the necessary precautions and the protection of personal data online. So the administration decided to take care of safety and prevent the recurrence of such cases. In particular, all victims are strongly advised to obtain new documents to verify their identity. In addition, the resource encourages every victim of a hacker attack to contact the sites support to resolve issues related to damages.

But these are not all measures to combat hacking. In order to provide protection for their clients personal accounts, the exchange has modernized and updated its own KYC verification system and artificial intelligence-based face scanning functions. In their opinion, all these measures will help eliminate the negative consequences of the attack and establish the functioning of the exchange in the future.
 

Hacking consequences

As representatives of the site confirm, the photos leaked to the Internet coincide with the information that was processed by an outside organization earlier in December 2017 and February 2018. After the images were released online, over the next several weeks, the sites security team was busy trying to find the source through which the data had leaked to the hackers.

The monitoring of the status revealed a lot of fake, edited or simply changed files that were not certified with a special label. Such a watermark is placed on a mandatory basis by the exchange itself when identifying the clients identity. Nevertheless, the marketplace decided to compensate all affected users for the damage caused by the information leak.

According to representatives of the cryptocurrency resource, the security department uses all possible precautions to protect the deposits and personal data of its trading participants. These activities include updating the verification procedure and the face recognition function in the system. In addition, the storage and indexing of KYC information is carried out using the most advanced technology that was developed in 2019.
 

Blackmail from hackers

The hacking of the exchange became known on August 7 after a representative of the site announced the nuances of the incident. The administration of the resource stated that an unknown attacker who stole personal information demanded a reward of 300 bitcoins in exchange for returning 10 thousand files with personal data of clients and their images. The site itself refused such an offer and cooperation with the unknown, in principle, because the blackmailer began to upload classified information to the Internet.

A few days later, a certain netizen under the name Bnatov Platon, in correspondence with CoinDesk, claimed that he was able to track down criminals and get more than 60 thousand files with information about platform users. He also announced that he wants to receive a reward for the work done and provide information about fraudsters. He agreed to transfer information about them (names, numbers, data from the server, correspondence, photos) only after the exchange pays him, but the management considered such demands extortion and did not react in any way to the publication in the journal about cryptocurrencies.
 

Hacker Catch Privilege

The exchange not only refused to pay the required money to the blackmailers, introduced VIP privileges for the affected clients, but also decided to assign a reward for catching the hacker who leaked secret data. A $ 250,000 bonus awaits whoever provides information leading to the arrest of the criminals involved in the spring 2018 burglary attempt. The award will be credited to BNB electronic cash. And if there are 2 or more sources of valuable information, then the service reserves the ability to split the amount between them.