Online stock-trading platform Robinhood said it resolved an issue affecting bank transfers for some customers on Tuesday, six days after 5 million customer email addresses and 2 million customer names were taken in a malicious hack.
"We fixed the issue that was temporarily affecting bank transfers for some customers," the Robinhood Help account tweeted Tuesday morning. "We’re sorry to anyone who may have been impacted by it — you should be able to move money in and out of Robinhood again."
About 40 minutes earlier, the company tweeted: "We’re investigating reports that some customers are experiencing issues transferring money in and out of Robinhood. We’re working to resolve this as soon as possible and will post any updates at http://status.robinhood.com."
Robinhood said in a blog post Monday that it was hacked last week when approximately 5 million customer email addresses and "a different group" of approximately 2 million customer full names taken.
The company said a malicious hacker "socially engineered" a customer service representative over the phone Nov. 3 to gain access to certain customer support systems. That allowed the hacker to obtain customer names and email addresses, but also the additional full names, dates of birth, and ZIP code of 310 customers.
The company said that 10 customers had "more extensive account details revealed."
Robinhood said that no Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, or debit card numbers were exposed, and the hack caused no immediate financial loss to customers.
Once it secured Robinhood's systems, the hacker "demanded an extortion payment," the company said.
Robinhood notified law enforcement and security firm Mandiant to investigate the breach.
"As a Safety First company, we owe it to our customers to be transparent and act with integrity," Robinhood Chief Security Officer Caleb Sima said. "Following a diligent review, putting the entire Robinhood community on notice of this incident now is the right thing to do."
Robinhood Markets' stock price slipped after the online retail brokerage reported the security breach.
Tech Crunch reported that the Robinhood hack was similar breach to how Twitter was hacked in July 2020, when a then-teenage hacker used social engineering techniques to trick some of Twitter’s employees into thinking the hacker was an employee.
The hacker then accessed an internal Twitter "admin" tool, which he used to hijack high-profile accounts and spread a cryptocurrency scam. The attack netted the hacker just over $100,000 in cryptocurrency.
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