Fortress Lost Customer Funds Prior to Acquisition by Ripple
Ripple covered losses suffered by unnamed customers of crypto custodian Fortress Trust as part of a deal to acquire it.
UPDATE: The company affected by the hack is Retool, a San Francisco-based company with Fortune 500 customers, CoinDesk reported.
- "Last week, 4 Fortress customers were impacted by a third-party vendor whose cloud tools were compromised. Thankfully there is no breach within Fortress Technology or systems, impacted accounts were fully restored, and most importantly, of course, there is no loss of funds," Fortress disclosed on X on September 7, a day before getting acquired by Ripple.
"We immediately terminated the vendor integration, and out of an abundance of caution, paused all accounts to assess and ensure system-wide security. We are taking all necessary measures to make sure the vendor is held accountable."
- "Conversations accelerated last week following the security incident via a third-party analytics vendor, but this opportunity makes sense for Ripple in the long term,” said a spokesperson for Ripple, who clarified that the company — already a minority investor in Fortress — had discussed a potential acquisition with Fortress previously." reported The Block.
“Luckily, Ripple was in a position to act quickly to step in and make customers whole, and there have been no breaches to Fortress technology or systems. Fortress notified customers immediately of the incident when it happened — as they mentioned in their tweets,” the spokesperson was quoted as saying.
- Swan Bitcoin, a customer of Fortress Trust, said that their client funds were not impacted by incident.
- UNCONFIRMED: While it remains unclear whose funds were lost, rumor has it that approximately 450 BTC have been stolen from Fortress.
