A Coinbase User Lost $11.6M in Fake-Notification Scam

Attackers’ ill-gotten activities seem to still bedevil the crypto market in these early days. However, according to a report from the US Attorney Office, an unknown Coinbase user has lost a big sum of  $11.6 million in less than 10 minutes under a fake-notification scam prob.

According to the incident report, the notification eventually appeared to be from Coinbase after the users purchased 200 bitcoins, meanwhile, it was not. A moment after the incident happened, the notification reportedly alerts the user that its account has been locked up.

To follow up, a federal judge has approved an injunction to take back over $600,000 in BTC from a Huobi Global wallet. Leading to this, the federal investigators claim that the $600K BTC is part of the $11.6 million that the Coinbase user lost. Also, the investigators asserted this due to how the hackers’ transaction ended up in an account associated with Huobi Global Exchange.

Citing from the federal complaint, the court has only identified the Coinbase user as G.R who called a phone number on the notification aiming it will be connected to a Coinbase customer service representative at that time.

An “unidentified individual 1,” or “UI-1,” answered the call and asked G.R. to make a series of changes to the account. Once granted access to the Victim Account, UI-1 increased the daily transaction limit and also attempted to deactivate certain notifications and alert settings on the Victim Account

In fact, with no doubt, it is unclear how the notorious hacker got to know about the Coinbase transaction at that time. At the moment, we can’t tell whether the online notice mentioned in the order showed up on the phone or computer.