Major Canadian Crypto Exchange Coinsquare Says Client Data Breached

Coinsquare, one of Canada’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, may have been breached, but the company claims customer assets are “secure in cold storage and are not at risk.”

The exchange, which touts itself as “Canada's trusted platform to securely buy, sell and trade Bitcoin, Ethereum, and more,” emailed customers yesterday to report a “data incident” in which an unauthorized third party accessed a customer database containing personal information.

According to the email, the breach exposed “customer names, email addresses, residential addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, device IDs, public wallet addresses, transaction history, and account balances.” Although the email was sent yesterday, Coinsquare discovered the breach last week and notified customers via Twitter.

Earlier this morning, we detected unusual activity on our platform and out of an abundance of caution, we decided to undergo an unscheduled maintenance period while we address this issue.

— Coinsquare (@Coinsquare) November 19, 2022

“No passwords were exposed. We have no evidence any of this information was viewed by the bad actor,” the email stated.

Coinsquare suspended its activities on its platform after detecting the vulnerability last week, triggering speculation of possible liquidity issues, given the momentous implosion of multi-billion-dollar crypto exchange, FTX, earlier this month. Full service has been restored one Friday, according to a tweet.

“We want to reiterate that 100% of client funds are safely held in cold storage and are not used for business activities,” the company tweeted.

CoinDesk reached out to Coinsquare for further comments and the exchange is yet to respond.

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