Asset manager Fidelity has revealed that a cyberattack in August 2024 compromised the personal information of 77,000 clients. Although no accounts were affected, this unauthorized access raises important questions about the security of the company, which thus suffered its 4th data breach this year.
77,000 Fidelity customers exposed
Fidelity Investments is one of the world's largest asset managers, overseeing more than $4.9 trillion. The company offers a wide range of financial products, including ETFs and a cryptocurrency custody service.
In January 2024, its spot Bitcoin ETF, the Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC), was approved, becoming one of the largest with around 210,000 BTC under management, or almost $13 billion.
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A recent complaint filed by the asset manager with the Maine Attorney General reveals that 77,099 Fidelity customers affected by data breach.
This Wednesday, October 9, Fidelity sent a letter to customers affected by this attack.
Excerpt from the letter sent by Fidelity
The attack is believed to have taken place between August 17 and 19, 2024, whena hacker was able to access information without authorization using 2 recently created customer accounts.
The letter states:
“We detected this activity on August 19 and immediately took action to end this access. An investigation was quickly launched with the help of external security experts. The information obtained by the third party concerns a small subset of our customers. Please note that this incident did not involve any access to your Fidelity account(s). »
This is already the 4th data breach that Fidelity has suffered this year, revealing a persistent problem in securing its systems. Additionally, the company's X account has remained inactive in recent days, despite posting several times a day before the incident, sparking speculation of an internal crisis.
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Fidelity hacks remind us of the importance of the self-custody offered by Bitcoin
One of the goals of Bitcoin is to enable intermediary-free exchange of value, thus providing its users with the ability to manage their funds autonomously and exchange value without trusting a third party. In addition, by holding your BTC yourself, your data remains private, because you are the sole holder.
The situation is all the more ironic in the case of the Fidelity hack, because it is the only asset manager that itself ensures the custody of its BTC without resorting to a third party for this task.
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Indeed, other spot Bitcoin ETF managers, such as BlackRock, Bitwise or Grayscale, mainly rely on the custody service of the Coinbase exchange platform.
The latter holds the largest amount of BTC under management, with more than 2 million Bitcoins, or more than 120 billion dollars. A Coinbase hack or bankruptcy would be catastrophic for the cryptocurrency ecosystem and could affect prices even more profoundly than the bankruptcies of FTX in 2022 or Mt. Gox in 2014.
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Source: Maine Attorney General
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