Coinmama is among the biggest and most popular names when it comes to buying Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) cryptocurrencies. The platform is very popular with those who want to purchase cryptocurrencies using credit cards. However, a recent announcement from Coinmama states that the platform has gone through a major security breach - where data of over 450,000 users has been stolen and posted on the dark web.
Coinmama announced that they learnt about this security breach on the 15th of February. The Coinmama security team is now looking into the breach. The company pointed out that the data that has been posted on the dark web registries is that of the users who had registered on the Coinmama platform on or before the 5th of August, 2017. More importantly, however, Coinmama pointed out that as of 15th February 2019, there was no instance of this data being used by any perpetrators.
With regards to what ‘data’ has been stolen, it has been confirmed that usernames and PHPASS (hashed passwords) of Coinmama users have been stolen. This data is being sold on the dark web marketplace Dream Market. The hacker is selling the data of 450,000 Coinmama users for a price of 0.3497 Bitcoins which is roughly equal to $1,250 by current Bitcoin rates.
The official announcement reads:
“As of February 15, 2019, there has been no evidence of this data being used by perpetrators. Given the dated nature of the published data, we have no reason to suspect that any other Coinmama systems are compromised. Coinmama does not store credit card information.”
How to Secure Your Coinmama Account?
The hacked data is only of the users who had registered on Coinmama on or before the 5th of August, 2017. However, all 1.3 Million Coinmama users are at potential risk. Hence, it is best advised to change your password if you have an account on the platform. Moreover, if you use the same password on any other platform, it is best advised to change that as well!
Coinmama also advised the users to set a strong password of minimum 8 characters along with upper-case, lower-case characters, and symbols as well as numbers. The company also pointed out that users must not download suspicious files or provide data to any unofficial communication.
Coinmama has informed the users that they are monitoring their systems for any further breach of security. The company is also enhancing their security system to make sure that such a breach does not happen in the future.
Part of a Bigger Hack: Data of Over 747 Million Accounts At Risk
The popular crypto-platform also pointed out that this wasn’t an isolated attack on their website. Coinmama is one among 24 companies which were affected by this hack. A total of 747 Million users from various companies have been affected by this hack. All of this data is being sold at the same Dream Market platform. This data is being sold by a seller who has the username of ‘Gnosticplayers’. Reports from earlier this year had pointed out that the use of Bitcoins on the dark web has doubled over the course of 2018.
Other websites that have been affected by this hack include the likes of Dubsmash (data of 167 Million users), popular travel platform Ixigo, interior design website Houzz (which is the worst affected, with data of 57 million accounts being sold for 2.97 BTC), YouNow live streaming platform (40 Million accounts) and gaming website StrongHoldKingdom (5 Million accounts) among others.
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