Crypto Portfolio Tracking App Apologizes for Racist Messages Sent to Customers- Investigations Underway

The crypto portfolio tracker Blockfolio, owned by the exchange FTX, got its messaging system compromised, as racist notifications started to appear. Blockfolio’s users received the offensive messages with a warning that they’re about to lose all funds.

Some Offensive Messages Included a URL Reportedly Linked to Pornography

According to the crypto tracker and trading app, they’re almost entirely back with their notification system, and the company issued a public apology:

We are incredibly sorry about the offensive messages posted today. No funds/etc were affected; this did not interact with any trading features.

Also, Blockfolio said they’ve revoked access to the compromised Signal submitter and removed the racists’ messages. Tracking parts of the app are again coming back progressively, said the FTX-owned app.

All the users’ offensive messages seem to be the same ones, with clear grammar mistakes. It reads as follows:

Hello we are sad to announce we closure of our services to all black people and *N-word*, with immediate loss of all funds. We advise all users to do a prompt withdraw to prevent loss of funds.

The offensive notification wraps up with an invitation to visit a website that reportedly hosted pornography. However, other users in the crypto community claimed they got different messages that didn’t contain URLs.

if (!window.GrowJs) { (function () { var s = document.createElement(‘script’); s.async = true; s.type = ‘text/javascript’; s.src = ‘https://bitcoinads.growadvertising.com/adserve/app’; var n = document.getElementsByTagName(“script”)[0]; n.parentNode.insertBefore(s, n); }()); } var GrowJs = GrowJs || {}; GrowJs.ads = GrowJs.ads || []; GrowJs.ads.push({ node: document.currentScript.parentElement, handler: function (node) { var banner = GrowJs.createBanner(node, 31, [300, 250], null, []); GrowJs.showBanner(banner.index); } });

Could the Incident Be Bigger Than What Has Been Said?

Per Blockfolio, funds and trading features were not affected in the incident. However, there are users on social media reporting issues on trading.

As part of the apology, Blockfolio announced that all their users with trading enabled had been credited with $10 free, “as will anyone else who signs up” during this week (maximum of one million people).

FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried also said that they’ll conduct a security review over the next month and confirmed that the company is taking responsibility for the incident. Although the crypto community has been saying this incident is related to a hacking attack, the company hasn’t confirmed it officially at all.

Moreover, social media users are also talking about possible significant data exploitation due to the incident if this was a product of a hacking attack.

What are your thoughts on this incident? Let us know in the comments section below.

[…]
Learn more