Coinbase Offers $20 Million Bounty for Information on Extortion Attempt

Coinbase announced a $20 million bounty for information on criminals who attempted to extort the exchange. The company faced an extortion attempt where a criminal gang accessed data from less than 1% of its users by bribing overseas customer service agents.

Stolen data included user names, masked bank account numbers, identity documents, and limited corporate data.
The attackers did not obtain sensitive information like login credentials or private keys.
The criminal group demanded a ransom of $20 million, which Coinbase refused to pay.
Instead, Coinbase initiated an investigation and incentivized public assistance with the bounty.

In response to this incident, Coinbase is enhancing security measures and establishing a customer support hub in the U.S. They will implement additional identity verification for high-risk accounts and mandatory scam-awareness notifications. Ongoing monitoring may cause delays in some transactions as a precaution.