DoJ Opens Investigation into Coinbase Over Customer Data Breach

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The US Department of Justice (DoJ) is investigating a security breach at Coinbase, a crypto exchange that suffered a leak involving internal documents and data from a “small subset” of customer accounts.

The breach, reportedly facilitated by bribing overseas support agents, was first reported by Bloomberg and confirmed by Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer, Paul Grewal.

Grewal stated:

“We have notified and are working with the DOJ and other US and international law enforcement agencies, and welcome law enforcement’s pursuit of criminal charges against these bad actors.”

The DoJ has yet to comment publicly. Coinbase revealed the breach last week after receiving a $20 million ransom demand, which it refused, instead offering a $20 million reward for information leading to the culprits.

The compromised data includes names, addresses, emails, account balances, masked bank details, and partial Social Security numbers, though private keys and passwords were secure, and Prime accounts were unaffected.