Coinbase Phishing Attacks

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Coinbase

Coinbase is one of the leading crptocurrency exchange platforms in the United States. Around the timeframe of April-May 2021, scammers started launching phishing attacks targetting Coinbase users. In these schemes, the scammers would scare the user into believing that their account had been breached. When the user tried to restore their access, they would be asked to approve permissions to view email messages, then provide their username and password to log in. Users who provided their login details into the website would be giving them directly to the thieves, along with the ability to access any confirmations that may be sent by email. This could be used to drain the customer's account of all cryptocurrency funds. It is unknown what funds were lost, and there are no reports of funds being recovered. In September 2021, Coinbase decided to share a blog post to warn users about the phishing attacks from several months prior.

This exchange or platform is based in United States, or the incident targeted people primarily in United States.

About Coinbase

"Coinbase is a secure platform that makes it easy to buy, sell, and store cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and more." "As the leading mainstream cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, Coinbase has become a standard on-ramp for new crypto investors. Coinbase offers a wide variety of products including cryptocurrency investing, an advanced trading platform, custodial accounts for institutions, a wallet for retail investors, and its own U.S. dollar stable-coin."

"Coinbase was founded in 2012 and is a fully regulated and licensed cryptocurrency exchange supporting all U.S. states except Hawaii. Coinbase initially only allowed for Bitcoin trading but quickly began adding cryptocurrencies that fit its decentralized criteria." "Its list expanded to include Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, XRP, and many others with the promise of more as long as its requirements are met."

"Between April and early May 2021, the Coinbase security team observed a significant uptick in Coinbase-branded phishing messages targeting users of a range of commonly used email service providers (you can learn more about phishing in our Help Center.) Though the attack was broad, it demonstrated a higher degree of success bypassing the spam filters of certain older email services."

"The messages used a wide variety of different subject lines, senders, and content. It sometimes sent multiple variations to the same victims. Depending on the variant of email received, different techniques to steal credentials were used as well. The following screenshots show a representative victim experience, but wouldn’t necessarily have been seen in exactly this order by all victims."

"For some victims with Hotmail accounts, attackers attempted to add a malicious application to the user’s inbox. If the recipient clicked “Yes”, an attacker would be able to read all the user’s emails (including password reset and device verification emails sent by Coinbase)."

"Finally, the user would be sent to a Coinbase-branded phishing page attempting to capture the user’s Coinbase login credentials. Note that while the URL contains the word “coinbase”, the domain is not “coinbase.com” Once the attackers had compromised the user’s email inbox and their Coinbase credentials, in a small number of cases they were able to use that information to impersonate the user, receive an SMS two-factor authentication code, and gain access to the Coinbase customer account. With access to these accounts, the attacker was able to transfer funds to crypto wallets unassociated with Coinbase."

"Once [Coinbase] learned of the attack, [they] took a number of steps to protect customers, including working with external security partners to take down malicious domains and websites associated with the phishing campaign, as well as notifying the email service providers most impacted by the attack."

"Coinbase, like most financial institutions or FinTech companies, will never contact you asking for your password, two-factor authentication codes, or to take actions like installing new software or sending funds to a cryptocurrency address." "Coinbase provides a number of resources to help customers avoid online scams and report potential malicious activity. Cryptocurrency transactions are irreversible. If you (or a hacker who has accessed your account illegitimately) send cryptocurrency to a third party, it cannot be reversed or stopped."

This exchange or platform is based in United States, or the incident targeted people primarily in United States.

The background of the exchange platform, service, or individuals involved, as it would have been seen or understood at the time of the events.

Include:

• Known history of when and how the service was started.
• What problems does the company or service claim to solve?
• What marketing materials were used by the firm or business?
• Audits performed, and excerpts that may have been included.
• Business registration documents shown (fake or legitimate).
• How were people recruited to participate?
• Public warnings and announcements prior to the event.

Don't Include:

• Any wording which directly states or implies that the business is/was illegitimate, or that a vulnerability existed.
• Anything that wasn't reasonably knowable at the time of the event.

There could be more than one section here. If the same platform is involved with multiple incidents, then it can be linked to a main article page.

The Reality

This sections is included if a case involved deception or information that was unknown at the time. Examples include:

• When the service was actually started (if different than the "official story").
• Who actually ran a service and their own personal history.
• How the service was structured behind the scenes. (For example, there was no "trading bot".)
• Details of what audits reported and how vulnerabilities were missed during auditing.

What Happened

The specific events of the loss and how it came about. What actually happened to cause the loss and some of the events leading up to it.

Key Event Timeline - Coinbase Phishing Attacks

Date	Event	Description
May 1st, 2021	Main Event	Expand this into a brief description of what happened and the impact. If multiple lines are necessary, add them here.

Technical Details

This section includes specific detailed technical analysis of any security breaches which happened. What specific software vulnerabilities contributed to the problem and how were they exploited?

Total Amount Lost

The total amount lost is unknown.

How much was lost and how was it calculated? If there are conflicting reports, which are accurate and where does the discrepancy lie?

Immediate Reactions

How did the various parties involved (firm, platform, management, and/or affected individual(s)) deal with the events? Were services shut down? Were announcements made? Were groups formed?

Ultimate Outcome

What was the end result? Was any investigation done? Were any individuals prosecuted? Was there a lawsuit? Was any tracing done?

Total Amount Recovered

There do not appear to have been any funds recovered in this case.

What funds were recovered? What funds were reimbursed for those affected users?

Ongoing Developments

What parts of this case are still remaining to be concluded?

General Prevention Policies

Always be sure to only interact with platforms through their official website or specific solicited emails. While many platforms will email you about suspicious activity if your account is breached, you can always check with the website and attempt your login directly. Sometimes you may have to click a link you receive by email in order to confirm certain actions, which is different because you specifically performed an action to trigger the email.

Be sure to check that emails come from the official domain name of the platform and that there's no typo present. You can hover over links in emails to confirm they also go to the correct domain name. If in doubt, email the support service of the platform in question.

Platforms can protect themselves by blocking/delaying large withdrawals when logging in from an IP address which is inconsistent with past login activity.

Individual Prevention Policies

No specific policies for individual prevention have yet been identified in this case.

For the full list of how to protect your funds as an individual, check our Prevention Policies for Individuals guide.

Platform Prevention Policies

Policies for platforms to take to prevent this situation have not yet been selected in this case.

For the full list of how to protect your funds as a financial service, check our Prevention Policies for Platforms guide.

Regulatory Prevention Policies

No specific regulatory policies have yet been identified in this case.

For the full list of regulatory policies that can prevent loss, check our Prevention Policies for Regulators guide.