Crypto.com in hot water as it denies hiding data breach from 2023

Major crypto platform Crypto.com has found itself in a communication crisis as it struggles to deal with media allegations that it failed to disclose a data breach in 2023.

Today (UTC time), Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek called the allegations "misinformation" spread by "uninformed sources," stating that suggestions the company did not report or disclose a security incident are "completely unfounded."

"As we reported in a NMLS Notice of Data Security Incident filing and in additional reports with the relevant jurisdictional regulators, we detected a phishing campaign that targeted one of our employees in 2023," the CEO said.

According to him, the incident, which "impacted an extremely limited number" of their clients, was contained within hours, and no customer funds were accessed.

Marszalek was forced to respond to a Bloomberg report stating that Noah Urban (20), a Florida man who pled guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, had “talked his way into the account of an employee at Crypto.com."

The report was also shared by blockchain sleuth ZachXBT, who replied to Crypto.com on X: "Your team covered up a breach that impacted the personal information of your users," later adding that the platform had been breached "several times."

In a post on August 26th, the analyst claimed that the company "had a massive incident they covered up in the past that they never made public," but at the time, ZachXBT said he was not allowed to provide more details about the incident.

Meanwhile, reacting to Bloomberg’s report, another popular crypto investor, Jordan Fish, a.k.a. Cobie, said this type of breach "happened at least two other places too without disclosure [as far as I know]."

Urban was part of the Scattered Spider gang. According to court documents, from August 2022 through March 2023, he was involved in stealing crypto assets from at least 59 victims in the US. The court also ordered Urban to forfeit approximately $4.8 million in crypto assets and other property.