Coinbase says it halted more than $280,000 in bitcoin transactions during Twitter hack – The Verge

The cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase said that it stopped around 1,100 customers from sending bitcoin to hackers who gained access to high-profile Twitter accounts last week.

Last Wednesday, over 100 Twitter accounts, some belonging to major companies like Apple and high-profile people like Vice President Joe Biden and Bill Gates, were hacked as part of a massive coordinated bitcoin scam. According to Twitter, the hackers were able to convince some of the companys employees to use internal systems and tools to access the accounts and help the hackers defraud users into sending them bitcoin.

According to Forbes, Coinbase and other cryptocurrency exchanges were able to stop some customers from sending bitcoin to the hackers by blacklisting the hackers wallet address. Specifically, Coinbase says it prevented just over 1,000 customers from sending around $280,000 worth of bitcoin during last Wednesdays attack. Roughly 14 Coinbase users sent around $3,000 worth of bitcoin to the scams bitcoin address before the company moved to blacklist it, the company said.

We noticed the scam and began blocking transactions within a couple of minutes of the initial wave of scam posts, a Coinbase spokesperson told The Verge on Monday.

Twitter accounts belonging to cryptocurrency exchanges including Binance and Gemini were also targeted during Wednesdays attack. Coinbases chief information officer told Forbes on Sunday that it learned of the scam shortly after tweets were posted from fellow exchanges accounts.

As of Monday, Twitter is still investigating Wednesdays attack. On Friday, the company put out a blog post confirming that 130 accounts were targeted and the hackers were able to initiative a password reset, log in to the account, and send tweets for 45 of those accounts. Twitter also said that the hackers were able to download account data belonging to eight unverified users.

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Coinbase says it halted more than $280,000 in bitcoin transactions during Twitter hack - The Verge