7 million OpenSea addresses leaked in 2022 breach, SlowMist confirms

The OpenSea email service provider data breach that occurred in June 2022 resulted in the leak of 7 million email addresses.

Experts have found that this includes many well-known people and companies, as well as key opinion leaders (KOLs) in the crypto industry.

open sea gap

According to the latest update shared by SlowMist's pseudonymous chief information security officer “23pds”, the leaked data included the email addresses of numerous crypto industry professionals, such as the founder and former CEO of Binance, Changpeng 'CZ' Zhao.

23ps <a target="_blank" href="https://x.com/im23pds/status/1878614277478809715″ target=”_blank” rel=”noopener” data-wpel-link=”external”>tweet read,

“The amount of leaked data reached 7 million, including a large amount of email information of overseas cryptocurrency professionals, including many well-known people, companies and key opinion leaders (KOLs) in the industry, which may represent higher threats to the privacy and security of assets of the cryptocurrency industry in the future.”

OpenSea, which happens to be one of the largest nft marketplaces in the world, initially alerted its customers about the breach on June 29, 2022, during which it identified that an employee at Customer.io, its email automation provider, had leaked the email. addresses to an external party. Customer.io later confirmed that the breach also compromised customer data from five other companies, although it did not reveal their identities.

Although the breach took place more than two years ago, this information was not publicly disclosed until recently, allowing attackers to exploit it for phishing and scams.

Billions lost to phishing attacks

CertiK's recent report revealed that phishing emerged as the most costly attack vector in 2024, causing losses of $1.05 million across 296 incidents, including three cases where losses exceeded $100 million. This represented almost half of the total value stolen that year and 39.1% of the total incidents, indicating that phishing generally results in higher losses per attack compared to other vulnerabilities.

The blockchain security company explained That phishing remains popular among attackers because it is simple and effective. Exploit human weaknesses rather than focusing solely on technical systems. Through deceptive emails, fake websites, or fraudulent messages, attackers manipulate users into sharing sensitive data such as passwords, private keys, or wallet addresses.

In the crypto industry, phishing is especially devastating due to the irreversible nature of transactions, as stolen funds cannot be recovered unless the attacker returns them. As such, quarterly phishing losses were highest in Q2 2024, recording over $433 million.

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