Coinbase says hackers bribed staff to steal customer data, demanding $20M ransom

I'm having de ja vu here. If they only found out when they attempted to extort them does it mean they don't even bother to log employee access? Is there any means for accountability at all internally?

It would be so simple to have access tracking and flag or lock out rogue employees... I look forward to seeing what the golden parachutes look like.

Logging and retroactive auditing seems like the very least they should do. Even asking the customer service agent to first provide identifying details of the customer they can't easily know or guess by themselves doesn't seem excessive, given the sensitivity of the information.

It won't work for 100% of all calls (what if the customer is locked out themselves etc.), but those calls can then be handled by even more closely monitored agents.

"Less than 1% of monthly transacting customers" means up to 1% were accessed – that seems very high, i.e. much higher than the number of customer service contacts I'd expect.

Looking at their blog post, it seems like they paid customer support agents to hand over sensitive data. The attackers did not have access to any agent accounts themselves, and the customer service agents were accessing data they were already privileged to anyways.

https://www.coinbase.com/blog/protecting-our-customers-stand...

It makes me wonder what type of access support agents have in the first place. A lot of this information should require "unlocking" on a case-by-case basis by challenge/response while interacting with a customer.

I built the admin panel used by internal employees and contractors at a major fintech payments processor (PCI Level 1). We had to add multiple levels of safety once we decided to hire a team outside of our US office including logging, monitoring and also rate-limiting (ask for manager to approve if more than 5 full details requests, etc.) I think these requirements are much stringent due to PCI-DSS standards for credit card processors. I wonder if a lack of such standards in crypto makes the companies holding customer funds more lax.

The customer service agents were accessing data they were already privileged to anyways.

That's not how front line support agent access should work. You get access based on active cases you are working on, not the keys to the kingdom because you might need to support a member at some future point in time.