Celsius users beware: Phishing attacks could escalate as Celsius suffers data leak

• Celsius Network announced that vendor Customer.io recorded a breach of client email addresses and transferred it to a third party.
• Phishing attacks targeting cryptocurrency users are on the rise; following OpenSea and MetaMask, Celsius users are likely to be targeted.
• Celsius Network token CEL posted 15% gains, unaffected by the data leak and the possibility of malicious attacks on users.

Celsians Network, the unofficial community of Celsius holders, shed light on the data breach, where client email addresses were transferred to a third party. Though Celsians Network does not consider the breach a significant one, Celsius users could become new targets of phishing attacks. 

Also read: Celsius bankruptcy filings show a company in deep trouble

Celsius Network announces data leak by vendor

Celsius Network, a crypto lending company, announced that vendor Customer.io was informed of a data breach. A Customer.io employee accessed a list of Celsius client email addresses held on their platform and transferred those to a third party. 

Celsians Network believes the incident does not pose any high risk to clients whose email addresses may have been affected. However, the data breach makes Celsius users likely to be a target of phishing attacks. 

Phishing is a form of attack that targets users through emails, luring them to reveal personal data and clicking on links that lead to malicious websites to potentially install malware to steal crypto. The crypto ecosystem has witnessed an increase in such attacks since the beginning of 2022. Users of popular crypto wallet, MetaMask and NFT marketplace OpenSea were targeted in phishing attacks. 

Attacks were reported by websites like DeFiPrime, the firm that started Etherscan and CoinGecko, that saw attacks manifest as malicious pop-ups. 

Celsius plays down the incident, leaves users at risk

While Celsius Network played down the data breach and argued that it does not pose high risks, being aware of an email-address leak to a third party might call for more than “awareness.” An employee at Customer.io deliberately and with malicious intent used his access to gather the email addresses and deliver them to a third party. Terminating the Senior Engineer’s employment is far from the end of the road for users affected by the breach. 

Celsius and the vendor have failed to disclose critical pieces of information like the number of emails leaked, making contact with the affected users or details of the platform that now has access to the client email addresses. 

Protect against phishing attacks in three simple steps

Phishing is considered one of the most effective forms of cybercrime; however, there are a few steps to follow to prevent falling prey to such an attack. 

• Be suspicious of urgent calls to action, threats, unknown senders - Emails that urge you to click, call or open an attachment. A false sense of urgency is associated with phishing attacks and scams. 
• Mismatched email domains and generic greetings - Emails that claim to be from a reputed firm or an institute you recognize but are sent from a different email domain are commonly scams. Check for subtle misspellings of the legitimate domain, a common trick employed in phishing attacks. 
• Suspicious links and attachments - If you suspect that an email message is a scam from a sender you do not recognize, do not click on links or open attachments. 

Celsius token rally unaffected by data leak

Celsius (CEL) token posted 15% gains overnight, nearly 80% over the past two weeks. CEL token’s price rally remained unaffected by the data breach incident. Forbes has compared the #celshortsqueeze to the GameStop campaign of 2021. To protect themselves from bears, Celsius have banded together under the Twitter hashtag #celshortsqueeze to make it difficult for short sellers of CEL. 

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