The attackers may well use the compromised information to launch follow-up attacks on customers directly. That’s not the end of the threat, however. The organization says it rejected the demand and is contacting affected users. Robinhood says the attackers requested a ransom for the safe return of the information, although it doesn’t appear to be a ransomware attack. The intrusion occurred on November 3, 2021, with the attacker accessing customer support systems and exfiltrating the data. Robinhood says that it was the victim of a phishing attack, in which a fraudster sends an email purporting to be from a legitimate source in order to obtain the recipient’s login details or to trick them into downloading malware. However, the organization says that no financial records or Social Security information was compromised.
Robinhood confirmed that a further 310 people had their date of birth and zip code stolen, and 10 customers had additional details stolen. In a statement issued earlier this week, the organization confirmed that a fraudster had breached its systems in a phishing attack. tweeting "It took less than a day for big tech, big government and the corporate media to spring into action and begin colluding to protect their hedge fund buddies on Wall Street.The stock-trading app Robinhood Markets has been hit by cyberattack compromising the names and email addresses of 7 million users. Over a hundred thousand poor reviews were given against the Robinhood app on Google Play Store lowering its overall star rating to 1 star, requiring Google to remove them.Ĭriticism of the attacks on r/WallStreetBets and Robinhood's decision came from politicians, media and entrepreneurs across the political divide - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeting "Gotta admit it’s really something to see Wall Streeters with a long history of treating our economy as a casino complain about a message board of posters also treating the market as a casino" along with Donald Trump Jr.
Retail investors subsequently turned viciously on Robinhood. On January 29th the Robinhood app along with other online trading platforms such as WeBull and IMC Markets took the unprecedented decision to ban or limit trading of $GME and other heavily shorted stocks.
Similar short squeezes were done against the similarly short sold cinema chain AMC and phone companies Nokia and BlackBerry. This is a common technique known as a short squeeze. Since shares borrowed for short selling have to be bought back and returned by a certain date, the buying by r/wallstreetbets users put pressure on the funds shorting the stock to buy it back (thus forcing up the price further) at a loss.
Instigated by the update posts of a member of r/wallstreetbets, Keith Gill aka Reddit user u/DeepFuckingValue, members of the subreddit and associated Discord decided that this situation could be reversed by buying cheaper Gamestop (known as $GME) shares or put options (options to buy the stock at a specific price at a later date) to force up the price. The short selling was enormous, with at one point more than 140% of the total shares issued being shorted. They did this by short selling its stock - borrowing stock from other financial services institutions to sell and push down the share price, to repurchase later and pocket the difference. Some US hedge funds, notably Melvin Capital and Citron Research decided to take advantage of Gamestop's continuing decline.