CoinsPaid, an Estonian provider of cryptocurrency payment services, experienced a cyberattack on January 5th, leading to the unauthorized access and theft of approximately $7.5 million in digital assets across the Binance (BNB) and Ethereum (ETH) chains.
Notably, this marks the second time in six months that CoinsPaid has been targeted in a security breach, raising concerns about the platform’s vulnerability and the imperative need for enhanced security measures in the crypto industry.
CoinsPaid Hit Yet Again – Cursed?
CoinsPaid provides solutions to close the gap between clients who want to pay with cryptocurrency and businesses that typically operate inside the conventional financial system.
On their website, it states that every month, they facilitate over a million transactions worth a total of over 7 million EUR. CoinsPaid states that it has handled cryptocurrency transactions totaling more than 19 billion euros to date.
UPDATE
After more investigation, our system has detected more unauthorized transactions on #BNB too involving @coinspaid
Hacker has got another $1M worth of digital assets 924K BSC-USD and 268.5 $BNB.
All together total loss is $7.5MHacker’s address:… https://t.co/877vBm0Uah pic.twitter.com/xD6tg9QznK
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On January 6, the artificial intelligence system of Cyvers discovered several anomalous transactions, which made it possible to withdraw $6.1 million worth of digital assets in Tether and CoinsPaid’s native token, CPD.
CoinsPaid experienced a breach in July 2023, which resulted in the theft of $37.3 million. At the time, the company shut down for four days while it looked into the breach with assistance from Chainalysis, Binance, and other sources. The business used its reserves to pay customers.
CoinsPaid Hack: Fake Job Interview Scheme
CoinsPaid claims that hackers tricked one of its employees with a phony job interview. According to reports, the employee accepted a job offer and downloaded malicious software, which gave the bad guys access to CoinsPaid’s infrastructure and enabled them to steal personal data.
The Cyvers team believes that the infamous Lazarus group from North Korea may be behind the Jan. 5 hack, albeit this is still unknown.
In all, the most recent hack took $7.5 million from CoinsPaid and transferred it to an external wallet. Cyvers revealed that the money was subsequently transferred to cryptocurrency exchanges including ChangeNOW, WhiteBit, MEXC, and others.
Over the years, the organization has been associated with numerous hacks. The organization allegedly stole almost $3 billion worth of cryptocurrencies over the previous six years.
According to reports, the Lazarus Group was responsible for multiple cryptocurrency attacks in 2023. According to blockchain intelligence company TRM Labs, the organization pilfered cryptocurrency worth at least $600 million in 2018.
Featured image from iStock