Coinbase Partners with Irdeto to Fight Crypto-Fuelled Piracy

Major crypto exchange Coinbase has partnered with the digital platform security team Irdeto to, as the partners state, fight against piracy and cybercrime funded by cryptocurrency.

Irdeto says that the collaboration will improve its Cyber Services, especially the Payment Disruption service. The team finds and removes threat actors that utilize crypto platforms to fund illicit activities.

Per the press release, Irdeto provides Coinbase with comprehensive investigative reports to help them identify and remove bad actors. “This disrupts the criminals’ ability to receive payments for illegal services and halts their progression into more serious forms of cybercrime,” it argues.

Furthermore, Irdeto plans to leverage the collaboration to expand its investigation scope, given the increase in the use of crypto as payments for services or profit laundering by gangs.

Additionally, the Cyber Services team also supports clients in reporting illegal activities and bad actors to law enforcement. This way, they help identify the crypto address owners, advance investigations, find and arrest offenders, build prosecution cases, and support the seizure and recovery of illicit crypto assets.

The partnership “empowering us to remove financial lifelines from pirates and cheat developers before they can scale their operations,” said Mark Mulready, Vice President of Cyber Services at Irdeto. “This is a powerful example of how strategic industry collaboration can disrupt criminal infrastructure and protect the digital ecosystem.”

Cutting Cybercrime Infra at Source

Irdeto’s investigations found that threat actors across the video entertainment and gaming ecosystems utilize crypto increasingly for illegal activities. The team has shared what it’s described as “a concerning trend.” Namely, the use of crypto by illicit service providers jumped from 13% in 2022 to 17% in 2023, and then to 19% by the end of 2024.

Therefore, the new partnership aims to disrupt cybercriminal infrastructure at the source, it says.

Irdeto is “committed to not only detecting threats but actively dismantling the infrastructure that supports them,” added Mulready. The company will also continue working closely with digital transaction providers and law enforcement agencies globally.

He added that partnerships, like the one with Coinbase, enhance the Payment Disruption service, thus helping to combat cybercrime across industries. Therefore, it’s actively signing more partnerships with crypto platforms. This will boost its ability to track crypto usage in illicit markets and remove critical financial enablers.

According to John Kothanek, Coinbase’s VP at Global Intelligence, “partnering with Irdeto allows us to act swiftly on high-quality intelligence, disrupt malicious actors at an early stage and reinforce trust in the cryptocurrency ecosystem.”

Meanwhile, earlier in May, cybercriminals demanded $20 million in Bitcoin in an extortion attempt targeting the exchange and its customers. A few days later, the US Justice Department (DOJ) opened an investigation into the security breach.

In response to the incident, Coinbase’s chief legal officer Paul Grewal stated that “we have notified and are working with the DOJ and other US and international law enforcement agencies and welcome law enforcement’s pursuit of criminal charges against these bad actors.”

On 25 May, investors filed a class action lawsuit, alleging that the exchange failed to promptly disclose a serious data breach and a regulatory violation, and that these contributed to a drop in stock price.

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