U.S. fintech company Betterment has officially confirmed it suffered a hacking attack that leaked customers' personal information, TechCrunch reported on Monday.
The hackers entered Betterment's systems on Jan. 9 through a social engineering attack, the company said. The attack exposed information including customers' names, email addresses, addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth. The hackers used it to send fake cryptocurrency scam messages.
The hackers sent customers scam messages promising to triple the value of cryptocurrency if they transferred $10,000. Betterment moved to respond immediately, but it has not disclosed how many customers were affected. The company said it blocked access as soon as it detected the hack and is investigating with a cybersecurity firm.
Betterment advised customers to ignore the scam messages and stressed that there is no evidence so far that customer accounts were directly hacked or that passwords were leaked. Despite the seriousness of the incident, Betterment has drawn controversy for taking steps to hide a webpage notifying the security incident from search engines.
Chi-gyu Hwang
delight@d-today.co.kr