Coinbase has rewarded a researcher with $250,000 for uncovering a flaw in the platform’s trading interface.
The bounty, the company’s highest payment, was paid to a researcher named “Tree _ of _ Alpha.”
The researcher warned Coinbase via Twitter of a “potentially marketing-nuking” bug that requires an urgent patch.
Immediately, Coinbase received a report about HackerOne from the researcher and the company got to work.
“The underlying cause of the bug was a missing logic validation check in a Retail Brokerage API endpoint, which allowed a user to submit trades to a specific order book using a mismatched source account. This API is only utilized by our Retail Advanced Trading platform, which is currently in limited beta release,” Coinbase said.
Coinbase explained that even if exploited, the vulnerability cannot be exploited for large-scale attacks because “Coinbase Exchange has automatic price protection circuit breakers.” In addition, its trade surveillance team monitors markets for anomalous trading activity.
For more information, read the original story in ZDNet.