Trading platform Robinhood has suffered a breach compromising the personal information of about 7 million customers. In an official blog post, Robinhood said that the incident took place on November 3, when a cybercriminal “socially engineered a customer support representative by phone” to gain access to the company’s customer support system. After exfiltrating data, the cybercriminal demanded an extortion payment, which the company refused to pay, instead reporting the attack to law enforcement and enlisting a cybersecurity firm to respond to the incident.
What Data Was Stolen in the Robinhood Data Breach?
Robinhood reports that the cybercriminal got away with the following information:
- Email addresses for approximately 5 million customers.
- Full names for a different group of approximately 2 million customers.
- More detailed Personal Identifying Information (PII) belonging to approximately 310 customers, including full names, dates of birth, and zip codes.
- An extremely unlucky subset of about 10 customers had “more extensive account details” compromised. However, Robinhood didn’t elaborate on what they mean by “extensive.”
What Should Robinhood Customers Do?
While Robinhood is in the process of notifying breach victims, all customers should assume their information was compromised. The investigation and remediation efforts are still in their early stages, and security incidents have a nasty tendency to turn out to be worse than initially believed.
If you’re a Robinhood customer, the most important thing to do is to immediately change your password for your Robinhood account. If you’re reusing this password on other sites, you need to immediately change those, too. Then, moving forward, you should shore up your password security habits by adopting the following practices:
Robinhood customers who had PII compromised — including names, addresses, and ZIP codes — are at very risk for identity theft. Again, even if you don’t receive a notification from Robinhood, it would be best to assume you’re in this category. At a minimum, you need to carefully monitor your credit reports for the next several months. Robinhood customers may also want to freeze their credit so that cybercriminals can’t easily open up accounts in their names.
Additionally, cybercriminals can use the information from the Robinhood database to custom-tailor phishing schemes, especially schemes involving bogus “investment opportunities.” Be on the lookout for schemes like these in your email inboxes.
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This Was a Consumer Breach. Should Organizations Also Be Concerned?
YES! Despite being told not to, many people reuse passwords across accounts, including across personal and work accounts. If one of your employees was a Robinhood customer, they may be using the same password at work that they were using on Robinhood. There’s no way for employers to know for sure — unless they’re using an Enterprise Password Management (EPM) platform like Keeper.
Keeper’s zero-knowledge, enterprise-grade password security and encryption platform gives IT administrators complete visibility into employee password practices, enabling them to monitor and enforce password security policies organization-wide, including the use of strong, unique passwords and MFA. Keeper takes only minutes to deploy, requires minimal ongoing management, and scales to meet the needs of any size organization.
Takeaways from the Robinhood Breach
The Robinhood breach is a reminder of how important it is for consumers to secure their login credentials and PII. Your personal cybersecurity is only as good as the security of the sites and apps you use, and any site or app can be breached. Engaging in good password security habits and securing your login credentials with a password manager like Keeper reduces your risk.
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