ELECTRUM

DESCRIPTION OF EVENTS

"I think this is my first post here. Long time lurker, but a shame it had be this kind of post.

Welp, that's it folks. All the BTC I had to to my name has been stolen on 11/13.

After checking my wallet a couple of days ago, I noticed an unfamiliar transaction that sent my remaining Bitcoins to some address on 11/13.

Not sure if it's a good idea to post the transaction ID, but I suppose I could if it sheds light on anything.

After I saw this, a rush of emotions came over me - despair, hopelessness, I had a pit in my stomach that was so dense, I nearly wanted to throw up. I could barely eat or sleep the day after. Even though it's been a few days now, those feelings are still very strong and I feel they probably will be for a long time. I keep waking up and checking the wallet hoping it's some sort of mistake, but it's real unfortunately.

It took a while for me to process through the situation just enough to put some thoughts together for this post, but I guess the point of this post is two fold:

It's a bit cathartic for me to be able to get some thoughts out

I hope that other people learn from my mistake - coin holders need to take security seriously. Be patient, learn about security of your coins, and enact what you learn. Be diligent. Convenience is an enemy of security.

The coins I had were originally mined back some time in 2013 if I remember correctly.

I really had no idea what I was doing at the time, but a friend turned me on to mining and I figured why not, may as well put my GPUs to use for something else while I wasn't gaming. When he first told me about mining, I thought hmm - I bet all this computing power is going to something like helping the government crack into things, but after some light reading on Bitcoin - it stood out to me as something special, so I decided to do some research, joined a pool and started mining some coins not long after.

Over the years, I sort of forgot about them and they stayed within my Bitcoin core wallet what I had used originally when mining, but three to four years ago my interest in the technology renewed and I really started reading more into the details of the technology and talking about it with coworkers.

However, after some time I noticed that the Bitcoin core client was becoming quite cumbersome having to store all of the blockchain data and I had moved on to laptops with less storage available than my old desktop and so I started looking at some of the more modern wallets and landed on Electrum.

I started using Electrum and it seemed to do the job well for what a wallets was designed for. I guess it's my mistake for not keeping up with the real (security related) news surrounding Bitcoin and wallets and various hacks and scams. My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure I fell victim to a phishing attack vector within the Electrum wallet and possibly was led to download an update from a location other than the main site (github releases section seems to be faintly a thing that I remember). It was either this, or maybe my system was compromised some other way - either way it's a painful lesson in how not keep your coins secure. I really should have just put my coins into cold/offline storage.

It's a real shame, I was really proud of owning these coins having mined them originally myself and I was hoping one day that I could split them between my two sons when they were old enough to understand and appreciate the technology in 18-20 years and who knows how widespread the technology and understanding will be by then. I feel like I failed them.

I'm not really sure where to go from here, still trying to work through that. I've definitely been reading up more on security and how to make sure that something like this doesn't happen again should I find my way back into crypto. I wish I would have taken security more seriously up front, it ended up being a very costly mistake not doing so.

I don't have nearly the disposable income to get back what I have lost. At the current price, it'd take years upon years, and it's highly unlikely that the price will retreat significantly. However, I truly still do believe in the technology, I just find it a bit sad that the main way to participate now is to convert USD to BTC - I wish mining was still a thing for the average person.

Stay diligent and vigilant people, don't become lax like me. Read up on methodologies and practices for keeping your coins secure. Be patient and take the time to make sure things are done right.

If this post helps even one person to take their coins more seriously and read up on better security, then I suppose it would be worth it getting these thoughts out. I wouldn't wish the feelings that I've experienced over the past couple of days on anyone, they are truly feelings of despair and regret."

"I tried following it myself, but I'm not a blockchain expert, but from what I'm seeing they redistributed the funds through many other wallets which I guess is a common tactic to reduce chance of being tracked.

Note that when I got back into the technology 3-4 years ago and talking about it with coworkers, I was made aware of other chain forks and did claim some BCH, BitcoinGold, Clams, and BSV - I followed guides for moving the funds to new wallets after having to give up my private keys. It should only be a couple of hops (4-5?) to see that these were mined back in 2013 or so. All in all, I had mined around 4 total, but traded some away when I got back into it 3-4 years ago around the time altcoins started gaining popularity."

"Thanks all for the responses. I enjoy reading them all, even the critical ones (as those are the ones that help you grow). I posted this right before I went to sleep last night which is why I was slow to respond to comments and post the TxID.

First, I'm not looking for pity here - I realize the mistakes I made are purely my own. First - I should have done my due diligence and researched hardware wallets more seriously. I've always been leery and untrustful of USB devices which is why I irrationally dismissed hardware wallets previously. Painful lesson, but you bet I'll be investing in one of these now for any future crypto holdings.

I also made a grave mistake of keeping my wallet on a machine that I used daily for other activities, these are the kind of things that should not be taken lightly and if there's anyone else out there doing this now - stop - read up on better security methodologies like hardware wallets or at the VERY LEAST setting up a separate system/environment purely for your wallet."

"Yes, the sad part is that I am fairly comfortable with Linux, yet I was using Windows. This is definitely a change that I will be making if/when I do need to use a wallet on a desktop."

"Looking at the txid it appears this is not part of the phishing campaign against vulnterable clients which are presented a rich test popup to update from a malware site by malicious ElectrumX servers upon trying to send a tx.

It looks as though this might be Google Adword malware related.

This is really unfortunate as old versions (< 3.3.4) are kept non-functional these days by legitimate servers by crashing the network stack of the client to avoid the phishing popup. This in turn makes uses update - but if you happen to use google and click on a paid ad rather than finding electrum dot org as the official site you can lose all your funds."

"Correct, I wasn't holding some insane amount. I had mined around 4BTC in total if you're able to trace it backwards, but spent or traded around 2 away, and kept 2 around. So, 2.03 is what was lost."

"The phishing attack was not email related.

If I recall, details are hazy at this point, but I believe a message popped up from within Electrum that sent me to a github repository for Electrum. I didn't realize that this was an unofficial source, I thought oh cool, maybe Electrum is open source and this is another distribution channel. Something like this is not unheard of, which is why I didn't think twice about it."

"Yes, I'm pretty sure this is what got me - details are hazy, but I have vague recollection of visiting a github page to update the wallet. I didn't think anything of it since the message likely came from within the app and github releases are popular way to release binary artifacts for lots of different open source projects."

"That's a pretty big fail on my part. I think part of my hesitation there was due to not trusting usb devices in general. I should have done the proper research though."

Explore This Case Further On Our Wiki

Reddit user finalremedy reports that they lost 2.02729024 BTC in an advanced phishing attack against their Electrum wallet. While there was some speculation about a Google Adwords phishing attack, they were most likely tricked by the common phishing attack against the Electrum wallet, leading them to a malicious github repository. Rather than downloading an upgraded Electrum wallet, this was malware designed to steal their funds. They have reported the incident to law enforcement and sought help from the community on Reddit.

Reddit - Dive into anything (Dec 21)
finalremedy comments on My BTC was stolen, sharing my thoughts (Oct 12)
etmetm comments on My BTC was stolen, sharing my thoughts (Oct 12)
Bitcoin Explorer - Blockstream.info (Oct 12)
finalremedy comments on My BTC was stolen, sharing my thoughts (Oct 12)
finalremedy comments on My BTC was stolen, sharing my thoughts (Oct 12)
finalremedy comments on My BTC was stolen, sharing my thoughts (Oct 12)
Bitcoin price today, BTC live marketcap, chart, and info | CoinMarketCap (May 16)
Transaction: b54a451c19e0a5e69c9c9bc0073d2499118bf574da254937ee698996f58181fb | Blockchain.com (Oct 12)

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