The crypto lending platform Celsius was hit with a data breach yesterday, according to official statements.
The company said attackers gained access to a “back-up third-party email distribution system” with a partial list of customer emails. The fraudsters then impersonated official company communications, asking users to provide their seed phrase—the private list of words that works like a key to users’ crypto walletswallets.
Customers say they’ve also received SMS messages with phishing links.
Hey Celsians - Our team is continuing to investigate the source of a fraudulent email that some Celsius customers have recently received. We're working to provide more updates as soon as possible.
In a blog post, Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky wrote that the company is “conducting a full internal investigation to see if there was anything at all that could have been done to prevent this.”
The note also stressed that “all funds are safe,” and that the hackers have not breached any of the company’s internal systems.
But that isn’t to say money hasn’t been stolen from Celsius customers—even if the funds on Celsius’ platform haven’t gone anywhere, fraudulent links sent through email or SMS can allow hackers access to users’ crypto wallets.
Need to clarify - our back-office was and is, as always, safe and secure. Like any company in the world we use many vendors and we are now investigating all of them to find where the list of emails and few phones came from. https://t.co/05rHmku3pQ
The Celsius hack is reminiscent of last year’s data breach at Ledger, a crypto wallet provider, where attackers gained access to one million customer emails. Users have since sued over alleged efforts to “cover up” the breach.
Celsius did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Daily Debrief Newsletter
Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
The Russian Ministry of Energy is considering offering its now strictly regulated Bitcoin mining industry incentives to move to the north of the country.
The move follows Russia slapping a Bitcoin mining ban on ten regions (mainly in the south) in January of this year: Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia, North Ossetia, Chechnya, Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson.
Russia to Ban Crypto Mining 'In Some Regions' Due to Electricity Shortages
The ban is set to rema...
Kraken will soon offer overseas customers the ability to trade U.S.-listed stocks through the crypto exchange’s platform, the company said in a press release on Thursday.
The offering, which covers more than 50 U.S.-listed stocks and exchange-traded funds, will be facilitated through a partnership with Backed, a firm specializing in tokenized securities, using the Solana blockchain to offer so-called xStocks, the company said.
Tokenization refers to the process of taking real-world assets, wheth...
Managing a crypto portfolio is a complicated business—unnecessarily so, according to Glider Co-Founder Brian Huang.
“We need to get to a point where we can say, ‘Hey, Mom, do you want to participate in this?’” he told Decrypt. “We spend a lot of time on this at Glider: how can we make the barrier to entry so low that anybody could do it?”
Glider is designed to enable users to “come to the platform with any trading idea,” Huang said, “and what we do is we automate that whole process for you. So...
