This article comes fromAnChain.AI, the original author: AnChain.AI, compiled by Odaily translator Katie Ku.
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what happened
There was a big news in the currency circle in December: the e-commerce database of the popular cryptocurrency hardware wallet Ledger was hacked in June 2020. So far, a large amount of customer personal information has been leaked, including more than 1 million emails and more than 272,000 Personal information, including shipping addresses and phone numbers, was leaked.
AnChain.AI believes that raising public awareness of impending fraud and cybercrime is urgent. As a leading blockchain cybersecurity company, our threat intelligence shows that the impact of an information breach is actually underestimated, and it concerns us personally. We also have employees, investors, friends and family members affected by this massive data breach.
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How serious is the Ledger data breach?
This may be the largest cryptocurrency customer data breach in history. It impacts over 1 million global Ledger customers in the following fields: Blockchain, Banks, VCs, Governments, Universities, and many individuals. It also shows a large global impact in the United States, Europe, and Asia Pacific.
The private data of Ledger customers that were breached included: emails, names, real addresses, phone numbers. Part of Ledger’s breach data is shown below, which shows that these organizations were affected:
Including the U.S. Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, the governments of Brazil and Singapore, JPMorgan Chase Bank, UC Berkeley, Stanford University, and more.
In this breach, the majority of Ledger customers were from the US (39%), Germany (10%), UK (9%), and many European and Asian countries. It will be interesting to see how data protection regulations such as GDPR in Europe and CCPA in the US will respond to this data breach.
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Who is really affected?
AnChain.AI data scientists delved into the massive leaked data. Using some NLP and Python scripts, we analyzed all email domains and found that these organizations were affected.
Surprisingly, Ledgers customer base is quite broad, including traditional industries that are remotely related to cryptocurrencies, such as: large banks, consulting firms, and governments.
18 venture capital funds: A16z, SIG, Index Venture, BVP, Sequoia, Founders...
32 banks: JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, HSBC...
70 Blockchain Companies: Ripple, Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, Chainalysis, Bittrex,…
78 consulting firms: Accenture, Deloitte, PwC, Ernst Young...
87 internet/high tech companies: Tesla, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, Disney...
157 government agencies: US Department of Justice, IRS, Singapore, Brazil...
Interestingly, emails from Tesla employees were found in the Ledger customer database. I don’t know if Elon Musk, who has been teasing Bitcoin, knows about it?
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Most (about 850,000) of the compromised emails were probably retailers using personal emails such as Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, Mail.ru, etc.
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What should you do?
The Ledger data breach is truly a catastrophic cybersecurity incident in the history of cryptocurrency. We hope this will prompt the industry to re-examine its data security and privacy rights and ensure customers data is protected like their encrypted assets.
Next 3 steps:
1. First, you should check if you are affected: https://ledgerhack.anchainai.com/2. Understand the risks:
The Ledger data breach only involved its e-commerce website, not its hardware wallets. Your crypto assets in your Ledger wallet are as safe as ever.
This tutorial will guide you on how to identify them and secure yourself from a massive data breach.
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Understand the need to take risks:
These 4 key pieces of private information were leaked from Ledgers customer database:
1. Name
2. Email
3. Home address
After the private information of the 4 different customers mentioned above was leaked in the Ledger data breach, the AnChain.AI team highlighted these four attack vectors that are likely to emerge in the coming months: phishing attacks, phone SIM swap hacks, scam phone attacks and Personal attacks.
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1. Phishing Attacks
Ledger maintains a log of all phishing activities, thus protecting customers. Keep an eye out, stay up to date, and if you find yourself being phished, send a message on the official ledger.com site here.
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2. Replace the mobile phone SIM card intrusion
At the beginning of 2020, there was a case of stealing cryptocurrency by changing the SIM card. Since this data leak involved phone numbers, its important to know about the phone SIM replacement hack.
SprintIn this case, the attacker will use social engineering techniques to gain access to your cell phone service provider. If successful, they will convince the service provider to switch the SIM card associated with your account to their own. At this point, the attacker can take control of your calls and text messages, which they can use to exploit more information about you, including the possibility of accessing SMS-based two-factor authentication. To fight back, make sure you have a PIN (Personal Identification Number) set up on your mobile phone account.
AT＆T: As a Sprint user, you should already have a PIN set up. Once registered, you will be logged in with your sprint.com username and password. Along with the PIN, youll be asked to choose a security question and provide the answer, just in case you forget your PIN. You can change your account PIN at any time by logging into sprint.com and clicking My Account, then selecting Profile Settings.
T-Mobile: Go to your account profile picture, sign in, and click Login Information. If you have multiple ATT accounts, select your wireless account, then go to Manage Extra Security under the Wireless Password section. Make your changes, then enter your password when prompted to save.
Verizon Wireless: When logging into my T-Mobile account for the first time, set a PIN or password. Select Text message or Security question and follow the prompts.
If possible, use app-based 2FA such as Google Authenticator or Authy. These authenticators are immune to SIM-change attacks because they are not tied to your mobile number.
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3. Scam calls
If you suspect that scammers are contacting you this way, don’t forget to report it to Ledger’s phishing attempts site.
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4. Personal attacks
Personal attacks are rare because it also exposes hackers. For those 272,000,000 Ledger customer breach high net worth individuals in posh neighborhoods, personal safety is always of paramount importance. Hackers can use personal address disclosure to adopt threat tactics:
If you live in expensive real estate, its important to consider the impact of a leak. Stay up-to-date on whats happening near you and report any suspicious activity to the police. Also, if you receive threats, please report them to Ledger and your local authorities.Info@AnChain.AI
If your company is mentioned, please contact the AnChain.AI team of cybersecurity experts for more details:
https://ledgerhack.anchainai.com/
