KYC Data Leak Denied by Binance
Binance, one of the largest crypto exchanges worldwide, has undergone significant backlash in 2019 for a security breach and now potentially an information breach. However, Binance has publicly denied that there has been a KYC Information Leak. The founder of the cryptocurrency exchange went to Twitter to publicly deny the claims, and that Binance is investigating where these claims began.
Lies or Truth?
The problem with Binance claiming that there hasn’t been a KYC Data leak is that a Telegram Channel was posting the user information of client’s passports, photographs and identifications. It boosted the popularity of the channel by thousands in hours, indicating that the data of countless Binance users has been corrupted. However, Binance is claiming that this data is from a prior information leak that took place in 2018. This was when third-party companies managed Binance. Since then, their security has increased dramatically.
The Public Statements from Binance
“First and foremost, there are inconsistencies when comparing this data to the data in our system. At present, no evidence has been supplied that indicates any KYC images have been obtained from Binance. These images do not contain digital watermark. On initial review of the images made public, they all appear to be dated from February of 2018. At this time Binance had contracted a third-party vendor for KYC verification to handle the high volume of requests at that time.”
Binance’s statements continued with: “Our security team is hard at work pursuing all possible leads to identify the source of these images. We want to inform you that an unidentified individual has threatened and harassed us, demanding 300 BTC in exchange for withholding 10,000 photos that bear similarity to Binance KYC data,” the exchange added.
Some are finding the statements of Binance to be truthful, considering that it was only a few months ago when several thousand bitcoins were stolen from the exchange. It would make sense that security is the company’s top priority.
Tom Arran
