Someone just lost 1400 BTC because of phishing during wallet update.

[rekter 8129]

https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/issues/5072#issuecomment-683356052

 

User is saying that he haven't accessed the wallet since 2017. Now old Electrum wallets were susceptible to phishing, and new versions should always be loaded trough the original site, not trough the wallet popups suggesting an update.

 

1400 btc is a lot of money, but anyone not storing that much in a cold wallet probably have way more as they weren't doing enough precautions.

[Tunuu 2235]

Wow! That is really sad and makes me fearing to storing large amount in cold wallet. I think i should buy ledger nano s for my coins because i have already saw a warning.

[Whited35 15285]

1 hour ago, rekter said:

User is saying that he haven't accessed the wallet since 2017. Now old Electrum wallets were susceptible to phishing

@rekter Maybe user has downloaded that old version of Electrum wallet from the wrong phishing site where malware operators have carefully masked the virus otherwise as far as I know, security data are not being compromised from the Electrum wallet.

[Upright 2688]

The obvious phishing on wallet, which I might say hacking in that sense, as wallets on some accounts tend to be on a temporary bases, as we have witnessed some crypto wallets which tend to be directly a phishing business on login details and related data from users.

But losing 1400btc is more like a nightmare, to lose such

[percare 3192]

I have read about the Electrum wallet having a vulnerability and asking for an update which was used to download software that was malware. There was a problem with an older version and this is probably what this person was using. Thank you for the link as it seems this is real and not someone trolling. Even the scammers wouldnt expect this.

Edited August 30, 2020 by percare

[Izeal 4404]

2 hours ago, rekter said:

https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/issues/5072#issuecomment-683356052

 

User is saying that he haven't accessed the wallet since 2017. Now old Electrum wallets were susceptible to phishing, and new versions should always be loaded trough the original site, not trough the wallet popups suggesting an update.

 

1400 btc is a lot of money, but anyone not storing that much in a cold wallet probably have way more as they weren't doing enough precautions.

I felt very bad because it can happen to anyone of us. Many people are holding coins like bitcoin, Ethereum for future but they are at very risk. Add as much as security system available in that wallet. Always check the wallet once in a week. Choose one of the best wallet go for paid wallet to hold very high amount.

[rekter 8129]

1 hour ago, Whited35 said:

@rekter Maybe user has downloaded that old version of Electrum wallet from the wrong phishing site where malware operators have carefully masked the virus otherwise as far as I know, security data are not being compromised from the Electrum wallet.

Take a look at the conversation under the link. He downloaded it from a pop up that old wallet gave. Old wallet was just vulnerable for phishing attempts like that. He should have deleted the old wallet and save the wallet.dat before doing anything else.

[kyoukage01 3181]

Ouch!!!

 

1,400 BTC is quite a lot indeed. And according to the one who lost it, that was the vast majority of his BTC. Condolences to him.

 

The victim stated that he is taking action against it, and according to another person who posted there, the original 1,400 BTC has already been split into five addresses. He has to move fast before those are split further and/or sold on exchanges, or else it would be even more difficult to recover his BTC at that point, if there are means to do so.

 

[Ridam 7455]

I'm sorry to say but people holding such big amount of Btc should be more careful about security. Downloading the older version of Electrum is completely bad idea as the older version are vulnerable and that's why they launched next version fixing the issues. And the popup from which he downloaded the update is scammer server containing his lines of code and it leads to loss of funds.

[CryptoDemon 370]

14 hours ago, rekter said:

https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/issues/5072#issuecomment-683356052

 

User is saying that he haven't accessed the wallet since 2017. Now old Electrum wallets were susceptible to phishing, and new versions should always be loaded trough the original site, not trough the wallet popups suggesting an update.

 

1400 btc is a lot of money, but anyone not storing that much in a cold wallet probably have way more as they weren't doing enough precautions.

1400 BTC is such a big amount and I cannot even touch a bit of it. I hope that he can retrieve it because it's not a joke. If something like this happens again, maybe I should quit crypto currency.

[Masterrex 559]

That was very unfortunate incident 1400 Bitcoin is a lot of money but according to the the thread this was an old electrum wallet, so how come it will happen with just an upgrade I smell something fishy going on in the Electrum wallet side the owner should file a complained so that electrum wallet will be held liable if the lapses was on their side.  

[rekter 8129]

59 minutes ago, Masterrex said:

That was very unfortunate incident 1400 Bitcoin is a lot of money but according to the the thread this was an old electrum wallet, so how come it will happen with just an upgrade I smell something fishy going on in the Electrum wallet side the owner should file a complained so that electrum wallet will be held liable if the lapses was on their side.  

Electrum client is an open source, not a company, so i am not sure how they would be held liable. And this bug has been already fixed years ago in newer versions. The problem with this wallet was the popoup system was compromised, and so being vulnerable for exactly this kind of phishing attemps. Those criminals who got this amount must be over the top now and can't believe their luck.

Edited August 31, 2020 by rekter

[bitcoin-shark 1928]

obviously we have to be very careful in these situations the risk of phishing, of scam losing everything is very high, in  this particular case it was better to download the latest version of electrum on another terminal and only from the original site not via pop-up and then transfer the bitcoin on the new wallet, I would have done so caution is never too much...

[duncun007 3577]

17 hours ago, rekter said:

https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/issues/5072#issuecomment-683356052

 

User is saying that he haven't accessed the wallet since 2017. Now old Electrum wallets were susceptible to phishing, and new versions should always be loaded trough the original site, not trough the wallet popups suggesting an update.

 

1400 btc is a lot of money, but anyone not storing that much in a cold wallet probably have way more as they weren't doing enough precautions.

it always amazes me how someone can be so careless with such amount of money, I read this so many times specially on wallets like MYETHERWALLET where so many people have lost coins because of phishing. even tho i dont own that much bitcoin but i always check 3 or 4 times before i log in.

[Mwangi 5611]

Oh my God thats a lot,. thats why am always working hard to clear everything online because , nothing is safe until am able to take away the pain of it, the right diea would be to have an end to end kind of exchange, once you have bitcoin there is a physical outlet for it, like the bitcoin ATMs was a very good idea

[CryptoDemon 370]

3 hours ago, Masterrex said:

That was very unfortunate incident 1400 Bitcoin is a lot of money but according to the the thread this was an old electrum wallet, so how come it will happen with just an upgrade I smell something fishy going on in the Electrum wallet side the owner should file a complained so that electrum wallet will be held liable if the lapses was on their side.  

Yes, it is not a joke. It can be a big disappointment for all of the crypto currency users because no one can easily have that much Bitcoin. I hope that it can be retrieved so that no disappointment will come.

[Calvinpriva 17296]

Bad news and it can make many people to quit in cryptocurrencies because 1400 BTC is a lot of money and he will never recover it. At least crypto could be easy to recover just as fiat currencies transactions.

[Mehar446 280]

If the user is right then development team must check for all the pull requests & audit the code carefully. So its a very severe problem for all of us.

[guatazoo 7150]

On 8/30/2020 at 7:30 PM, rekter said:

https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/issues/5072#issuecomment-683356052

 

User is saying that he haven't accessed the wallet since 2017. Now old Electrum wallets were susceptible to phishing, and new versions should always be loaded trough the original site, not trough the wallet popups suggesting an update.

 

1400 btc is a lot of money, but anyone not storing that much in a cold wallet probably have way more as they weren't doing enough precautions.

That's is really big loss for the individual person to lost such amount of bitcoins just only in a single time, so does it means those bitcoins were hacked?  

[rekter 8129]

4 hours ago, guatazoo said:

...

so does it means those bitcoins were hacked?  

Phishing is a form of hacking. I am pretty sure that people who did that didn't believe that this trick would work anymore. Not to mention that they would ever hit such a huge sums of bitcoin.

[magd 5231]

I have not used this wallet before, but I read about how strong its firewall is, so I think this news may be true, but the reason for losing the large amount is a personal error from the user and not because of the wallet vulnerability, as its strength is 94%

[Swapzone 174]

Yeah, he did make a mistake and it was too huge. Therefore, we must be very very aware in cryptocurrencies since it is full of scammers who are continuously trying to fool us.

[bogdanoff 3173]

This was disastrous but I read the comment of this person that lost the 1400 bitcoin from his wallet and he didn't see very dissapointed. He might have been and didn't want to look like that. I have also read in news that the address of the scammers is connected to an address of a Binance user. So it is possible that someone  have passed KYC and there may be people that know. As in past similar events. scammers might have not thought this too much.

[Raqeebzy 6456]

On 8/30/2020 at 5:30 PM, rekter said:

https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/issues/5072#issuecomment-683356052

 

User is saying that he haven't accessed the wallet since 2017. Now old Electrum wallets were susceptible to phishing, and new versions should always be loaded trough the original site, not trough the wallet popups suggesting an update.

 

1400 btc is a lot of money, but anyone not storing that much in a cold wallet probably have way more as they weren't doing enough precautions.

It is so unfortunate but the first fault is him keeping such large amount of crypto in a software wallet for a long time as such; it isn't safe enough. And updating wallet to later fall into phishing? 😪

Probably the holder of the BTC isn't so experienced because mistakes like this coming from whales isn't expected at all but it has happened. A lesson for lots of others.

[BrolySSJ 7899]

It is sad to see that someone has lost such a large amount if bitcoin, however if you have such a large amount then i definitely agree with you saying that you should have a cold wallet or a hardware wallet to keep your funds safe. Th would be the logical way to ensure security of your funds and it costs a fraction of what you have and are storing. Also these phishing scams try to obtain sensitive data from you and if these amount was hacked it is likely that the person shared their private key. Under no circumstances should anyone ever share that information.