Fintech firm Betterment confirms a data breach occurred after hackers sent a fake cryptocurrency scam notification to users

Automated investing platform Betterment confirmed that hackers broke into some of its systems last week and accessed the personal information of an undisclosed number of its clients.

In an email sent on Monday, which was seen by TechCrunch, Betterment said hackers gained access to some of the company’s systems on January 9 via a social engineering attack, which involved “external platforms” the company uses for marketing and operations.

The company said customer names, email addresses, postal addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth were compromised in the attack.

With this access, hackers were able to send a fraudulent notification to users, claiming to triple the value of their cryptocurrency by sending $10,000 to an attacker-controlled wallet, The Verge reported.

Betterment, which allows customers to invest in cryptocurrencies, also posted an announcement about the hack on its website, but did not disclose how many customers were targeted, nor how many customers had their personal information accessed, stolen, or viewed by the hackers.

Betterment added that it discovered the attack the same day and “immediately canceled the unauthorized access and initiated a comprehensive investigation, which is ongoing” with the assistance of an unidentified cybersecurity firm. Betterment also said it had contacted customers targeted by the hackers and “advised them to ignore the message.”

“Our ongoing investigation continues to establish that no customer accounts were accessed and that no passwords or other login credentials were compromised,” Betterment wrote in the email.

Betterment representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment seeking further details about the attack.

As of press time, Betterment’s security incident web page has a “noindex” tag hidden in its source code, which tells search engines to ignore the page, making it difficult for anyone searching the web to discover information about the data breach.