A manufacturer of physical cryptocurrency wallets has been hit by a data breach, exposing the personal details of thousands of customers and potentially exposing them to online or physical attacks.
Prague-based Trezor said on Thursday the breach of one of its shipping providers had exposed the names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of 11,742 of its customers, as well as the names, domicile cities and emails of a further 1,947 customers.
The breach affected customers in the US, the UK, Sweden, Colombia, Brazil, Italy, and Portugal who received an order in the 90 days up to 8 August, older data having been deleted.
“We absolutely understand how serious this is and the potential risks it poses to our customers and are deeply sorry to those affected,” Trezor said in a statement.
Cryptocurrency wallets, or cold wallets, in spite of their name, do not physically store cryptocurrency tokens, but only access credentials to tokens that remain encoded in a blockchain, or distributed ledger, that is typically managed by a peer-to-peer computer network.
They’re considered one of the most secure ways of managing cryptocurrencies, but in recent years criminals have increasingly circumvented this security by physically targeting wallet holders in order to extort access to their holdings, through kidnappings or other means.
Kidnappings accounted for more than half of the 46 violent attacks on crypto holders recorded so far this year, with more than one-third being invasions, according to figures from Chainalysis.
The Trezor breach follows an exploit in July that affected customers of Toronto-based Coinkite, which makes the Coldcard crypto wallet, and resulted in the theft of more than $100 million (£74m) in Bitcoin, according to an estimate by Galaxy Research.
The Coldcard exploit resulted from a security flaw that resulted in the generation of insecure credentials, which the attackers were able to reproduce.
Matt Broersma is a long standing tech freelance, who has worked for Ziff-Davis, ZDnet and other leading publications
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