Robinhood Hacking Attack; Class Action Lawsuit Filed

Hackers Stole 7 Million Customers Private Data

Robinhood stock trading platform with over 31 million users falls victim to a vhishing attack. The company embroiled in a current class action lawsuit reported that 5 million of its customers data are in the hands of criminal hackers. However, that number could climb as investigation continues.

The infamous Robinhood hack started inside the company, November 3rd, 2021. The source of the leak happened when a customer service rep for Robinhood Markets Inc., were duped in a phone call that lasted over an hour.

At the end of this call, the hapless Robinhood rep had given up the private keys to the personal information of nearly 7 million customers.

Robinhood revealing the incident did not anticipate the widespread devastation of its recent hack attack. The mysterious phone call is now one of the biggest hacks of 2021.

The organization, in damage control, reported that no Social Security numbers, debit card data, or bank accounts were compromised. But that is only to their current knowledge at least.

However, the hack raises new questions about efforts made by the company to guarantee that its customers get the support they need to invest safely. This breach is a terrifying example of ‘vishing’ or voice phishing, where an employee reveals crucial information. Usually, brokerages work hard to prevent these through special training about cyber security threats and breaches.

With the cyber hack hitting the mainstream, Robinhood worked feverishly to improve client support. However, more must be done when compared to its extraordinary growth.

In 2019, Robinhood had 370 support staff, with over half of the team outsourced. The complexity of this arrangement is that these customer service representatives had to work with 5 million customers. Today, only 1,000 representatives are dealing with 22.4 million customers, the majority of them new to trading.

This latest hacking disaster is only the latest in a series of customer service mishaps for Robinhood. The company was hit by a devastating system outage, and a separate hacking attack recorded in 2020.

The hackers walked off with millions of addresses, private emails, and phone numbers. Criminal hackers with phishing scams garner personal information such as passwords and credit card numbers through emails.

Still, Robinhood is not alone in cyber attack breaches. Other big tech companies have fallen victim to vishing in the past. One 2020 example includes the hacking of several prominent Twitter accounts, from Jeff Bezos to Elon Musk and even the USA president, Joe Biden.

Targeting employees with access to account support seems to be a fraction of what hackers can do in this modern technology era.