Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase unknowingly helped hackers steal $ 1.7 million in digital tokens

Fraudsters posing as representatives of the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase have deceived at least three users of the platform over the past week. One of the victims lost $ 1.7 million in digital tokens. Cointelegraph writes about it.

Tegan Kline, co-founder of Edge & Node, shared on the X platform the story of her friend who lost $ 1.7 million after a scammer convinced him to share part of his seed phrase. The scammer called posing as a Coinbase security officer and sent an email that looked official, confirming that the victim was «speaking with a Coinbase official.»

The scammer claimed that the victim’s wallet was «directly connecting to the blockchain», triggering transactions. He later sent another email showing the original transaction and directed the victim to a website to enter a seed phrase to stop the transactions. The victim knew it was unsafe, but still entered part of his phrase.A few hours later, $ 1.7 million disappeared from the victim’s wallet.

Alex Miller, CEO of Hiro Systems, explained that such sites capture data as it is entered, and a partial seed phrase could have been enough to hack. He also said that fraudsters recently tried to deceive him by posing as Coinbase representatives. He believes his information may have been stolen from the CoinTracker database in 2022.