Major Coinbase hack tied to TaskUs employees, court filing claims

Major outsourcing company TaskUs has been filed with a class action lawsuit alleging its negligence and subsequent cover-up of the involvement of its Indian employees in the extensive breach of leading U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase last December, reports Infosecurity Magazine.

TaskUs, which previously admitted remote worker involvement in the Coinbase hack, had one of its employees, Ashita Mishra, engaging in the sale of highly sensitive Coinbase user information to cybercriminals since September 2024, according to the lawsuit filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Such a lawsuit has also accused TaskUs of then downplaying its security failings, including the nonimplementation of weak protocols, while engaging in a buyout valued at $1.62 billion just before the hack was publicly disclosed.

"TaskUs has not updated its risk factors or otherwise made any material updates to its securities filings to explicitly alert the market to TaskUs' role in the Coinbase data breach," said the filing, which is seeking not only financial compensation but also TaskUs' adoption of more stringent security measures.