Jack Dorsey’s crypto platform Cash App falls prey to hack – SEC filing reveals that a former employee stole customer data in December

• Cash App recorded 44 million transactions in December 2021 alone.
• The company also reported over $200 million in gross Bitcoin profits in its fourth-quarter results, published in February this year.
• The information breaches do not include usernames, passwords, and other private info of individuals using the Cash App.

Jack Dorsey’s Block, the company that was formerly known as Square, has become the latest crypto-related platform that’s fallen victim to a hack. According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the US, the data breach was carried out by a former employee of the company, so it’s not the same as breaches suffered by some decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).

Further, the SEC filing says that the employee accessed investment reports of the company’s Cash App on December 10, 2021. “While this employee had regular access to these reports as part of their past job responsibilities, in this instance, these reports were accessed without permission after their employment ended,” the company said in its filing.

This includes full names and brokerage account numbers of Cash App users, and for “some customers” the brokerage portfolio value, their holdings, and the stock trading activity for one trading day. The brokerage account numbers are unique identification numbers used to identify users on the Cash App. Cash App saw 44 million transactions in December 2021, according to the company’s fourth-quarter results.

Insider attack in December

The company has said that no passwords, usernames, social security numbers, dates of birth, addresses, or payment card information have been leaked because of the breach. However, the company is still contacting its 8.2 million customers, according to a report by TheVerge.

“Upon discovery, we took steps to remediate this issue and launched an investigation with the help of a leading forensics firm. We know how these reports were accessed, and we have notified law enforcement. We are also contacting customers whose data was impacted. In addition, we continue to review and strengthen administrative and technical safeguards to protect the information,” the company said in a statement.

Block’s big crypto push

Block has recently been making the move towards cryptocurrency, though the December breach of the company’s data isn’t the same as recent crypto breaches that we have seen in the last six months or so. In this case, the breach seems to be on the non-crypto side of Jack Dorsey’s company.

Block reported revenue growth of 18% on a quarterly basis and 37% year-over-year, according to its fourth-quarter earnings report, which was announced in February. The company earned $2.6 billion of revenue and reported gross profits of $518 million. For 2021, the company’s Cash App also generated $10.01 billion of revenue in Bitcoin and $218 million worth of gross profits from Bitcoin.

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