The world’s leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance has announced a compensation plan for victims of the KYC hack that surfaced earlier in the month.
Lifetime VIP for Victims
According to the official blog post published on Aug. 23, the exchange is offering a lifetime Binance VIP membership to users who were affected by the KYC hack. The membership will include preferential trading fees, support and “more services,” with the exchange encouraging users to contact the exchange about their possible security breach.
Binance calls the investigation into the hack “ongoing,” and says that they are still pursuing leads in relation to the source of the images that surfaced online matching the exchange’s user information.
Binance also puts some of the responsibility for the hack on third-party vendors and points out the inconsistencies between the leaked KYC data,
During our review of the leaked images, there were multiple photoshopped or otherwise altered images which do not match the KYC images in our database and are being accounted into the comprehensive investigation. In addition, every image processed through Binance for KYC purposes is embedded with a concealed digital watermark, which was notably absent from all of the leaked images.
In a similar situation, crypto platform Huobi also pointed to hackers using third-party vendors to obtain client information, as opposed to a direct breach in the exchange.
Binance calls security their “top priority,” and is committed to “protecting our users in all possible circumstances.” The exchange claims to use an AI-based facial verification function first introduced in 2018, while upgrading their indexing of KYC data in 2019.
