Fighting Fraud at Coinbase with Soups Ranjan

A cryptocurrency exchange faces a uniquely difficult fraud problem. A hacker who steals my credentials can initiate a transfer of all my bitcoin to another wallet, and it is a non-reversible, non-identifiable payment. So it is really important to prevent those kinds of fraudulent transactions.

At the third Software Engineering Daily Meetup, Coinbase director of data science Soups Ranjan explained how Coinbase stays ahead of fraudsters, and he describes some of the cutting-edge social engineering attacks that are being used to try to steal cryptocurrency–including cell phone takeover attacks.

Next week, we will be airing three shows I did on-site at Coinbase–interviews with engineers from three different teams. Check out those shows for a deep dive into cryptocurrency uses, fraud, and infrastructure. Coinbase is an exciting company, and it was a lot of fun getting a panorama for how several parts of the organization function.

The next Meetup will be in New York. We don’t know when it will be yet, but sign up to follow us at softwareengineeringdaily.com/meetup.

Transcript

Transcript provided by We Edit Podcasts. Software Engineering Daily listeners can go to weeditpodcasts.com/sed to get 20% off the first two months of audio editing and transcription services. Thanks to We Edit Podcasts for partnering with SE Daily. Please click here to view this show’s transcript.