Robinhood Massive Data Breached

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Robinhood

Robinhood is one of the largest and most well-known trading applications in the United States. On November 3rd, the platform suffered a breach where the contact information of millions of customers was stolen. The breach happened due to an attacker successfully tricking a support worker into giving access. Robinhood notified all affected users. The attacker attempted to extort the platform for payment. It is unclear if any further attacks have yet been launched against any users whose data was compromised.

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

About Robinhood

"Investing for Everyone. Commission-free investing, plus the tools you need to put your money in motion. Sign up and get your first stock for free. Certain limitations and fees apply." "Tap into the cryptocurrency market to buy, HODL, and sell Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, and more, 24/7 with Robinhood Crypto."

"We believe the financial system should be built to work for everyone. That’s why we create products that let you start investing at your own pace, on your own terms." "Other crypto exchanges charge up to 4% just to buy and sell crypto. We charge 0%." "Industry-leading security. Ownership over your coins. Cold storage for vast majority of our customers’ coins. Crime insurance against theft and cybersecurity breaches."

"The firm, which helped popularize free trading, went on a hiring binge for customer-service staff, more than tripling the size of that team in 2020. The brokerage opened offices in Arizona, Texas and Colorado as part of its expansion. It unveiled 24/7 phone support [in October 2021]." "The online brokerage has about 18.9 million retail clients."

Robinhood "announced Monday [November 8th] that a Nov. 3 data breach resulted in various information about 7 million customers being exposed. For 5 million of them, email address were accessed, and another 2 million had their full names revealed." "A blog post from Robinhood describes the data breach as taking place on November 3."

"Late in the evening of November 3, we experienced a data security incident. An unauthorized third party obtained access to a limited amount of personal information for a portion of our customers."

"Most of them had either their email address or full names exposed, while a small group had more extensive information compromised." "Additionally, personal information including name, date of birth and ZIP code was exposed for about 310 people, and about 10 customers had more extensive account details revealed. Robinhood said it is alerting affected individuals."

"The Menlo Park, California-based brokerage said it believes no Social Security, bank account or debit-card numbers were exposed during the Nov. 3 incident, nor that customers incurred financial losses." "We previously disclosed that, based on our investigation, the unauthorized party obtained a list of email addresses for approximately five million people, as well as full names for a different group of approximately two million people. We’ve determined that several thousand entries in the list contain phone numbers, and the list also contains other text entries that we’re continuing to analyze. We continue to believe that the list did not contain Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, or debit card numbers and that there has been no financial loss to any customers as a result of the incident. We’ll continue making appropriate disclosures to affected people."

"The attack hinged on a phone call with a customer service representative, whom the intruder used to gain access to support systems, according to the statement. Robinhood said it contained the breach, notified law enforcement and enlisted security firm Mandiant Inc. to investigate the breach." "Robinhood’s blog post did not specifically indicate whether the millions of records were successfully exfiltrated by the attacker, or if they simply had access to that many during the data breach window." "The unauthorized party socially engineered a customer support employee by phone and obtained access to certain customer support systems."

"The hacker made threats about what would be done with the compromised information, although it wasn’t a ransomware attack, according to a Robinhood spokesperson, who declined to say whether the firm paid the perpetrator." "After we contained the intrusion, the unauthorized party demanded an extortion payment. We promptly informed law enforcement and are continuing to investigate the incident with the help of Mandiant, a leading outside security firm." "Whatever lacking security controls that allowed a hacker to trick a Robinhood customer service representative into granting them access to an internal system is a likely focus for its investigation."

"Mandiant Chief Technology Officer Charles Carmakal said Robinhood “conducted a thorough investigation to assess the impact” and that his firm expects the intruder to continue to target and extort other organizations over the next several months."

"But it’s precisely that kind of information that malicious hackers can use to facilitate further attacks against victims, like targeted phishing emails, since names and dates of birth can often be used to verify a person’s identity."

Gary Gardiner, Head of Security Engineering APAC & Japan for Check Point Software, elaborates on the risks that Robinhood users can expect to face as a result of this data breach: “The information leaked here is sensitive and bad news for the Robinhood community. Malicious hackers can use the information leaked to carry out more attacks against the victims, like targeted phishing emails, as names and dates of birth can often be used to verify a person’s identity. We urge Robinhood users to change their passwords immediately, enable two-factor authentication, and to watch out for any suspicious emails in their inboxes. According to our research, 58% of malicious files in the US were delivered via email this year.”

"As a Safety First company, we owe it to our customers to be transparent and act with integrity," Caleb Sima, Robinhood's chief security officer, said in the statement. "Following a diligent review, putting the entire Robinhood community on notice of this incident now is the right thing to do."

"Shares of Robinhood were down about 3% in after-hours trading Monday."

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 - Robinhood Massive Data Breached
Date	Event	Description
November 3rd, 2021 12:00:00 AM	Main Event	Expand this into a brief description of what happened and the impact. If multiple lines are necessary, add them here.

Total Amount Lost

No funds were lost.

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?

Prevention Policies

While the best solution is to have platforms require less personal inforamtion, all employees with access to sensitive information need to better protect that information. Access controls around unusual requests would also have prevented this situation.