Popular cryptocurrency exchange Binance has released an official statement following recent reports suggesting the exchange’s KYC infrastructure has been hacked, with customer information being leaked online.

Reports have emerged suggesting that the alleged hack has led to sensitive data from “hundreds” of people being leaked on Telegram.

Binance has now released an official statement regarding the allegations.

It details how an unidentified individual has threatened Binance, demanding 300 Bitcoin in exchange for withholding 10,000 photos that “bear similarity to Binance KYC data”.

Binance refused to cooperate with the alleged extortion, and in retaliation the individual has reportedly been distributing the data to the public and to media outlets.

The individual refused to supply the exchange with irrefutable evidence that it was in fact Binance’s KYC data when it asked for proof.

The announcement reads: “First and foremost, there are inconsistencies when comparing this data to the data in our system. 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.”

Binance’s initial review of the images that have so far been made public came to the conclusion that they appear to be dated from February 2018 – at which time it had contacted a third-party vendor for KYC verification in order to handle the high volume of account requests.

The exchange is now investigating the vendor it used back in 2018.

Binance is now seeking help from the community, offering a reward of up to 25 Bitcoin for any information that could help them to pursue the individual with legal action.

It has also contacted the relevant law enforcement agencies and alerted them of the incident.

Binance has stated it will provide any updates to the public as soon as they become available.

Interested in reading more stories relating to exchanges being hacked? Discover more about Binance’s large-scale security breach in which a reported $40 million was stolen from hot wallets.