South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Coinone is warning customers about phishing and identity theft after an attacker breached servers operated by its outsourced customer support provider, MetaM.
Coinone said Sunday that the attacker accessed MetaM’s servers on Thursday and viewed or extracted customer support records. The exchange said it learned about the breach that day. It did not disclose how many customers were affected.
According to Coinone, the information potentially exposed includes names, phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, bank account numbers, passwords, national identification numbers, home and wallet addresses, and transaction IDs.
The exchange said the affected data varies by customer, and customers who never contacted its support center were unaffected. It urged customers who shared passwords during support interactions to change them and warned that fraudsters could impersonate Coinone using details from previous conversations.
Coinone said its account, trading and wallet infrastructure operates separately from MetaM’s servers, and that there is no evidence of direct compromise. The exchange said it has reported the incident to South Korean authorities.
Regulatory focus on cybersecurity
The disclosure comes as South Korea moves to strengthen cybersecurity in the financial sector. In October, the Financial Services Commission identified security deficiencies at 130 of 555 financial firms reviewed.
On Thursday, the regulator said it would allow crypto exchanges to suspend withdrawals when hacking is suspected, alongside calls for round-the-clock monitoring.
