Top Trading Exchange Hit By Hacker Attack

A third-party vendor linked to the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange has suffered a data breach. The breach happened on or before December 13. The hackers gained access to 5,701,649 lines of information associated with the Gemini exchange customers. The obtained details include the email addresses and some of the phone numbers of these customers.

Third-party vendor linked to Gemini suffers a data breach

In the recent breach, the hackers did not obtain access to the full numbers of the exchange customers. Some of the phone number details were hidden from the attackers. After the news of the breach was reported, the exchange released a blog post that said that the breach seems to have been caused by an incident at a third-party vendor.

The Gemini exchange has also issued an alert of a possible phishing campaign that could be conducted as the hackers exploit the leaked customer data. The leaked database only contained limited customer information. Some hidden personal data not accessed because of the breach include sensitive customer information such as names, addresses, and Know-Your-Customer identification details.

Moreover, some of the email addresses used by the customers were repeated throughout the document. This way, the number of affected customers could likely be lower than the total rows of information that the attackers collected.

The Gemini exchange has 13 million active users. The exchange’s statement on this breach said that its customers were targeted by a phishing campaign, noting that a breach was caused by an incident with a third-party vendor.

“This incident led to the collection of Gemini customer email addresses and partial phone numbers. No Gemini account information or systems were impacted as a result of this third-party incident, and all funds and customer accounts remain secure,” the Gemini exchange said.

After the details of this data breach were made public, the Gemini exchange went offline for a short while. However, the exchange has regained full functionality, and at the time of writing, all of the exchange’s features were working as expected.

Increasing hacking attacks in the crypto space

Security breaches in the Web3 and crypto space have increased significantly over the past year. While some of these attacks have been mild, some have had far-reaching consequences.

Besides Gemini, the other major crypto firm affected by a similar breach this year is Trezor. Trezor is a cryptocurrency hardware wallet provider. Hackers gained access to the platform by using the email addresses of users.

Like with Gemini, the exploit on Trezor was caused by a breach of a third-party newsletter provider. The platform then used the stolen information to target users through a phishing campaign that resulted in massive losses.

Besides phishing campaigns, the other types of attacks that are popular in the Web3 space are exploits on smart contracts that could result in an entire protocol being drained of user funds.

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