Cryptocurrency exchange Although Coinbase has had great success but a shadow falls on them data leakage, which became known in January. The incident occurred through an outsourcing partner and is linked to a larger leak. The losses are estimated at $400 million.
In one case, an employee of TaskUs, an American outsourcing company based in India, was caught taking pictures of her work computer with her personal phone. Three employees and a person familiar with the case said Coinbase was immediately notified of the incident.
Former TaskUs employees said they were tipped off by company investigators or colleagues who witnessed the incident in the Indian city of Indore, noting that the woman and her accomplice allegedly passed information about Coinbase customers to hackers in exchange for bribes. And as if that wasn’t enough, more than 200 TaskUs employees were fired.
Previously, Coinbase blamed the hack on «foreign support agents».
In a May report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Coinbase said it knew that contractors had accessed employee data «without business necessity» in «previous months». It was only when the company received a ransom note on May 11 that it realized the access was part of a larger campaign.
In a statement to Reuters, Coinbase officials said the incident was discovered recently and that it has «severed ties with the TaskUs personnel involved and other overseas agents, and has tightened controls». Coinbase did not disclose who the other foreign agents were.
In a statement, TaskUs said that two employees were fired earlier this year after they illegally accessed information from a client whose name the company did not disclose.
«We immediately notified the client of this activity. We believe that these two individuals were recruited as part of a much broader, coordinated criminal campaign against this client that also impacted a number of other providers serving this client», — the statement said.
A person familiar with the case confirmed that the client was Coinbase and that the incident occurred in January.
Source: Reuters