The running year is proving to be an unlucky year for the cryptocurrency industry. However, it is proving to be an ever worse year for cryptocurrency exchanges.
The cryptocurrency exchanges have been in trouble since the start of the year and things are still not looking good.
Every now and then, a cryptocurrency exchange is finding itself facing a problematic situation. As a result, cryptocurrency exchanges end up getting into a lot of trouble.
Problems for Crypto Exchanges in 2022
The running year has seen the demise of several cryptocurrency exchanges from South Korea and Japan. Then came Thailand which forced multiple cryptocurrency exchanges out of its jurisdiction.
Then the major setback for the entire cryptocurrency industry was the FTX exchange crash. It left the entire cryptocurrency industry devastated.
Then came Coinbase, which is also facing multiple scrutiny cases in the United States and other parts of the world. Binance is also finding itself facing a troublesome situation due to its connections with FTX.
Gemini Faces a Data Breach
If things were already looking bad then another cryptocurrency exchange, Gemini has come in to make things quite worse.
The exchange has recently suffered a data breach that ended up in millions of emails and customer emails getting leaked out of its system.
The most shocking part is that the exchange did not face the data breach directly. Instead, it happened due to a third-party vendor that is related to the Gemini exchange.
Data Breach Took Place on December 13 or before that
It is being claimed that the data breach took place either on December 13 or before that. As a result of the breach, the hackers were able to gain access to over 5.7 lines of information.
These lines were pertaining to the emails and the email addresses of the customers using the Gemini exchange. To be exact, 5,701,649 lines of documentation have been exploited by hackers.
These lines contained access to the users’ sensitive information such as phone numbers and email addresses.
The investigation teams have confirmed that the hackers failed to access the complete phone numbers of the users. Instead, they were able to access the partial phone numbers only.
Only the initial numbers were visible while the rest of the numbers were hidden. Gemini has already tried providing clarity on the matter through a blog post.
The exchange claimed that it wasn’t them where the hackers were able to gain access to the data but a third-party vendor.
The exchange officials did issue a notification for the users to remain cautious of any kind of phishing emails they may receive from the hackers in the future.
What Will the Hackers Do with the Information?
Hackers are known to steal sensitive information from large databases. They gather the information of the users and mainly, go for the email addresses so they can send phishing emails.
The hackers also use the information to make money by selling it on the black markets mainly known as “The Dark Web”.
However, Gemini has made the right decision warning the users that they may receive phishing emails from hackers.
There is a possibility that the hackers may try and gain access to the Gemini users’ accounts by sending them emails impersonating Gemini representatives.
In most cases, the hackers pretend to be representatives of a financial entity and ask users to log into the portal using the link provided in the email.
If any user ends up giving out their password and username, the hackers use it to enter the users’ accounts and steal their funds.
In the case of Gemini, the hackers would transfer the crypto from the victims’ wallets to their own. At the time of writing, the total user base Gemini has is over 13 million.
This means that the hackers were able to gain access to almost half of the entire active user base of Gemini.
