cointelegraph

Hacker offers access to Binance law enforcement request panel, asks $10k in crypto

Photo of Mila Mila Send an email December 19, 2023
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A user by the name of “Miembro” posted on Breach Forums on Dec. 14 seeking to sell access to Binance’s law enforcement request panel for a price of $10,000 worth of Bitcoin (BTC) or Monero (XMR).

According to the post, the access provides “private access only used by Law Enforcement,” with unlimited requests to be answered within three to seven days.

The poster said interested inquiries can be made through the website portal or via Tox or Telegram with straightforward offers, “nothing saying hi or hey.”

Hacker offers access to Binance law enforcement request panel, asks $10k in crypto
Breach Forums listing to Binance’s law enforcement request panel. Source: Cointelegraph 

According to an investigation done by Hudson Rock researchers, Binance uses Kodex, a third-party service called Kodex, that validates law enforcement requests. 

The account is accessed via compromised credentials, which are said to belong to law enforcement officials. Three computers infected by malware were the cause of the compromised credentials, which subsequently ended up in the hands of the hackers. 

Related: How the Ledger Connect hacker tricked users into making malicious approvals

The credentials belonged to law enforcement officers from the Taiwanese Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB), the Uganda Police Force (UPF) and the Anti-Cybercrime Group (ACG) of the Philippine National Police (PNP).

The report said it is still unclear whether access was actually achieved through the compromised login credentials. However, in a follow-up post, the user said they have been testing the access and it “works fine.” 

“EDR works with email, phone numbers, doc numbers and even TXID or wallets.”

Binance is facing an impending ban from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the Philippines for operating as an unregistered exchange. 

On Dec. 18 a United States court ordered former CEO of Binance, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, to pay $150 million for violating the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) and CFTC regulations, while the exchange itself must pay $2.7 billion to conclude the CFTC enforcement action.

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