Coinbase Hack Highlights How Greed Can Overwhelm Cyber Defenses

Following cybersecurity best practices doesn’t always protect against human greed.

Scammers again proved that to be true by bribing Coinbase Global Inc. representatives based in India to steal customer data from the cryptocurrency company and then demanding a $20 million ransom.

The fraudsters offered cash to the Coinbase customer representatives in exchange for users’ names, addresses, government ID images and other data, the company said Thursday. They then intended to use that illicitly obtained information to pose as Coinbase and dupe customers into giving up their crypto.

Coinbase said it detected multiple instances of customer support agents gathering information about ...