An online investment service confirmed this week that cybercriminals broke into its computer systems and stole customer data during an attack last week.
Betterment, a platform that lets people invest in cryptocurrency and other assets, told users in a Monday email that intruders got into their systems on January 9. The break-in happened through what experts call a social engineering scheme, where criminals tricked their way into systems the company uses for advertising and daily operations.
Personal details exposed in attack
The stolen information includes customer names, email addresses, home addresses, telephone numbers, and birth dates, according to the company’s statement.
Once inside, the attackers sent fake messages to users. These bogus notifications promised to triple people’s cryptocurrency holdings if they transferred $10,000 to a digital wallet owned by the criminals.
The company has not said how many people were affected or how much information the thieves actually took.
Company says customer accounts remain safe
Betterment spotted the intrusion the same day it happened and quickly shut down the unauthorized entry, the email explained. The firm brought in a cybersecurity company to help investigate what happened. That investigation is still going on.
The platform contacted affected customers and told them to ignore the fraudulent messages.
“Our ongoing investigation has continued to demonstrate that no customer accounts were accessed and that no passwords or other log-in credentials were compromised,” the company wrote in its email to users.
Betterment representatives did not respond to questions asking for additional details about the incident.
The company posted information about the security problem on its website. However, the page includes special ‘noindex’ tag in its source code, that tells search engines not to display it in results, making it more difficult for anyone searching the web to find information about the data breach.
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