Prominent investor Mark Cuban has suggested that his Gmail account was compromised, following an alleged hoax call that led to him losing all access to his email. Cuban states that the malicious activity on his account began when he received a call from an individual posing as a Google employee, who claimed there was suspicious activity on his account. Following the security breach, he has warned his 8.8 million followers, that any correspondence from his account past mid-afternoon on June 22 is not legitimate.
This incident has led to widespread concern and speculation regarding the sheer volume of emails Cuban will have missed during his account’s inaccessibility, with Kraken crypto exchange’s CSO, Nick Percoco suggesting the total might be in the thousands. Furthermore, concerns have been raised about a potential compromise to Cuban’s other accounts, suggested by a user named “Mickamious”.
Quite worryingly, this isn’t the first major digital security setback faced by Cuban. Only nine months prior to this incident, Cuban’s digital wallet, containing cryptocurrency worth roughly $870,000, was compromised. The security breach occurred after Cuban activated MetaMask, a service he hadn’t used in five months. Cuban remained the focus of the news, with independent blockchain investigator Wazz being the first to signal the cyber intrusion due to irregularities in Cuban’s wallet.
Despite these incidents, Cuban continues to champion the cause of cryptocurrencies, lobbying regularly for enhanced regulations in the U.S. His most recent efforts targeted the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), petitioning it to supervise “all crypto” instead of the SEC as he opines the former institution has a more enforcement-focused approach to the crypto sector.