A few days ago, several reports spread on the internet related to a hacker selling data of thousands of users on the dark web. The hacker claimed he had access to KYC data from users in exchanges such as Poloniex, Binance, Bittrex of Bitfinex. However, it seems that this information is fake news.

Data Breach Affecting Crypto Exchanges is Fake News

A few months ago, there were some reports in which a hacker was selling data of KYC documents to users on the darknet. According to CCN, the individual provided information about this with some pictures related to this issue. CCN explained that they had access to the pictures and hat they confirmed they were original.

However, the information was not verified and the news spread all over the internet. Nevertheless, this seems to be false. According to a conversation with Decrypt, Leah Li, global PR manager at Binance, commented that they are aware of the situation and are investigating the issue.

Leah Li said on the matter:

“We’re aware of this allegation and have investigated the photos in question, but there is no evidence that the leak is from Binance.”

She went on saying that they have also seen photoshopped images of this issue. Security remains one of the main priorities for Binance and the exchange is doing everything as possible to protect the users on the platform.

“We have even seen photoshopped versions of the photos. Security is our highest priority and we do our utmost to ensure data breaches do not happen on our platform,” she mentioned. 

It might be possible to believe that this information comes from a phishing site rather than from Binance itself. During the last year, several phishing sites have been operating in the market trying to steal users from all over the world. These websites were built in the same way as online exchanges and promoted in Google to attack victims. Once the phishing site has users’ private information it could easily steal these individuals.

Furthermore, the details of the breach were released on a hacking forum on the darknet. However, the post didn’t receive any comment or upvote for six months. The hacker was also thinking about starting a crowdfunding campaign to delete the data.

At the same time, the report made by Decrypt shows that the hacker didn’t have a good experience on the darknet. It has tried different hacks, scams and other things but always unsuccessfully.

Moreover, Binance itself has denied that they’ve experienced a data breach during the last few months. Several exchanges have been hacked during the last months and years and most of them have always informed if there were some issues with their platforms. Binance did not experience any major breach since it was released to the market around two years ago. Just a few days back, the cryptocurrency exchange Cryptopia experienced a $2.4 million hack.

No other exchange such as Poloniex or Bittrex announced that they have experienced difficulties with their platforms. In this way, we can confirm that the exchanges did not suffer any security issue during the last months.

This situation confirms some things. The hacker did not have any information about users from Binance. Binance remains one of the most secure crypto platforms in the crypto market. And it shows that it is not so easy to hack a crypto exchange or spread FUD.

Although this time nothing happened, exchanges must protect users’ data and privacy more than anything else. This would allow the market to have trustful companies and firms offering services to individuals.