Did It Happen, and If So, Who's to Blame?

On Aug. 7, Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, fell victim to a hacking scandal that saw the miscreant allegedly gain possession of a huge chunk of the firm's Know Your Customer data.

"At the present time, no evidence has been supplied that indicates any KYC images have been obtained from Binance, as these images do not contain the digital watermark imprinted by our system."

At this point, some are questioning if Binance may be trying to absolve itself of any wrongdoing in the matter by somewhat deflecting the blame toward the third-party vendor managing the company's KYC info at the time.

"KYC data should be - and is - currently handled in-house by major exchanges. We may be more than a decade post-Satoshi, but the cryptocurrency ecosystem is still a work in progress. Stop-gap solutions like third party KYC data management may be necessary to bootstrap a platform, but that doesn't absolve Binance of responsibility in this case."

Binance is talking active remedial measures to stop the bleedingAs part of the firm's damage-control measures, Binance's security team is offering a reward of 25 Bitcoins to any person who can supply them with pertinent information that can help in the arrest of the hacker/hackers behind this incident.

Binance's performance has only continued to improve ever since.

"Over 500,000 Facebook users had their private data - including ID details and location data - leaked in April this year. The Cambridge Analytica saw the private data of 87 million Facebook users exploited in early 2018. Did anybody really care? Did anybody stop using Facebook? Bithumb lost $30 million in a hack in June - it still turns over $700 million in daily volume and ranks in the top 30 exchanges. Nobody cares enough about data privacy for the Binance KYC 'hack' to matter."

Lastly, according to various unconfirmed reports, it does not seem as though the actions of the hacker(s) are an attempt to spread any FUD regarding Binance, but rather he/she seems to be motivated by the Bitcoin ransom alone.

Cointelegraph reached out to Binance for comment, but the exchange representative said that no further information is available.

Platon - who refers to himself as a "White hacker" - allegedly demanded a reward of 300 Bitcoins from Binance in return for providing the company with details of the intruders, including their names, phone numbers, photos, server data and correspondence.