Yesterday, Binance issued a statement that it was investigating a hacker which demanded 300 BTC in exchange for leaked KYC data which was allegedly stolen from the Binance exchange.
Binance has confirmed that the threat came from a Telegram group which now consists of 10,000 members.
According to the released statement, Binance examined the data set used by the hacker, and it discovered that three were “inconsistencies” when compared to the real user data. Among the details that the exchange noticed was a lack of an internal watermark. This means that either the documents are not genuine or have no connection to Binance.
“We are still investigating this case for legitimacy and relevancy. After refusing to cooperate and continuing with his extortion, this individual has begun distributing the data to the public and to media outlets,” read the statement.
“…At the present time, no evidence has been supplied that indicates any KYC images have been obtained from Binance, as these images do not contain the digital watermark imprinted by our system. With that said, our security team is hard at work pursuing all possible leads in an attempt to identify the source of these images.”
CEO Changpeng Zhao (‘CZ’) took to social media to ask users to refrain from sharing the address of the Telegram group or spread information that comes from non-confirmed sources.
“Don’t fall into the ‘KYC leak’ FUD. We are investigating, will update shortly,” tweeted the CEO earlier today.
CZ believew that the data which was allegedly leaked came from a similar situation in 2018 which involved both Binance and Kraken.
“On initial review of the images made public, they all appear to be dated from February of 2018, at which time Binance had contracted a third-party vendor for KYC verification in order to handle the high volume of requests at that time,” it reads.
“Currently, we are investigating with the third-party vendor for more information.”
Binance has managed so far to avoid major security breaches, excepting the $40 -million hack which happened this year. Due to its Binance SAFU fund, the exchange refunded all of its affected users.
Featured image: SludgeFeed
