According to a report by SC Media, the cryptocurrency investment site Atlas Quantum has recently experienced a data breach. Happily, the incident did not result in the stealing of funds.
The company issued an official statement promptly and Chief Executive Officer, Rodrigo Marques, was adamant to assure clients that their funds are in no danger by stating:
“We would like to point out that this is not a steal of bitcoins in custody or violation of our accounts in the exchanges. However, our customer base was exposed. At the time of the incident, we took immediate steps to protect the database and passwords and private keys remain encrypted.”
Be that as it may, according to resources provided by Have I Been Pwned, the data breach left various sections heavily exposed. These are as follows: account balances, email addresses, names, and phone numbers.
Experts warn that Atlas Quantum is still not in the clear after the incident
The sentiment isn’t shared by Kevin Stear, a lead threat analyst at the JASK security firm, that indirectly said that the worst might be yet to come.
“The rise of cryptocurrency marketplaces has significantly expanded the attack surface of conventional banking trojan campaigns, and these targets are typically entities without the robust security maturity, and anti-fraud capabilities, of traditional online banking providers,” Stear commented.
He also added that “even though no funds were stolen from Atlas Quantum users through this breach, it still should set off a serious alarm, for both users and the company, as the initial infiltration could be an early step in footprinting for a much larger campaign (e.g., spear-phishing) for consequential credential stealing and account take-over.”
Kevin Stear’s opinion was somewhat mirrored by Anurag Kahol, Chief Technology Officer at Bitglass who stated: “For companies like Atlas, that store mass amounts of user data, reputation, and user data security are closely tied. Quickly identifying the cause of this breach and mitigating the threat of further data loss is a critical next step for Atlas and prevention should be top of mind for all companies that store high-value data.”