| News, Security

Phishing attempt on BitcoinTalk

We have been alerted to multiple phishing attempts in the past 24 hours which appear to have been targeted at BitcoinTalk users.

Anyone who received an email with the subject Mtgox.Claim assessment process should delete it and not click on the link it contains! This email did not come from Kraken, but was spoofed to look as though it came from our support email ([email protected]).

image

For more information about the email, see this post on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4m3op0/psa_phishing_attempts_reported_today_kraken_re/

We do not know exactly how the email addresses were obtained, but if your email address on BitcoinTalk is not hidden, you should consider hiding it. Kraken clients can be assured that this incident was not the result of any breach in Kraken’s database and all client information with Kraken is safe.

Even if you did receive the email, you are safe so long as you do not click on the link (just delete the email and you will be fine). If you did click on the link and you downloaded a file, DO NOT open or run the file. If you have a Kraken account and believe that your system or account credentials might be compromised, please immediately contact us at [email protected] and include “PHISHING” in the subject line. Our team will be able to lock down your account while you recover from the incident and get set up in a clean environment.

As always, if you receive an unexpected email that appears to be from Kraken, remember the following:

  • You can view the full email headers (or full source) to see where the email actually originates from.  Look out for SPF Fail or DKIM Fail, or lack of mention in the headers.
  • You can reply to the email asking for confirmation – if the sender is spoofed, the message will come to Kraken and not to the attacker
  • Mass mailings will always be signed with our key: https://www.kraken.com/en-us/security/pgp
  • Kraken will never require you to install any software, much less through a link from a public file sharing site such as Google Drive.

Here are some more resources to learn about phishing:

Other recommended security precautions:

Please take a moment to set up two-factor authentication on your account if you haven’t already:
https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/203395513

Additionally, you may want to enable the global settings lock for increased security:
https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/201396877-What-is-the-Global-Settings-Lock-

If you’re using Gmail, we recommend going through the following security checklist:
https://support.google.com/mail/checklist/2986618

Stay safe and keep on trading!