Coinomi Wallet Theft Warith Al Maawali

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Coinomi Wallet

Warith Al Maawali claimed that his Coinomi wallet was compromised and funds stolen due to a vulnerability in the wallet app. He demanded compensation from Coinomi and launched a public campaign against them. Al Maawali alleged that a missing digital signature in the Coinomi app caused his loss. He also claimed that his seed phrase was sent to Google's API, leading to the theft. Blockchain forensics showed that multiple victims' funds were being consolidated in hacker-controlled wallets, indicating malware or phishing. CipherBlade challenged Al Maawali to provide evidence of contacting authorities and offered assistance to expedite investigations.

This is a global/international case not involving a specific country.

About Coinomi

"According to Al Maawali, he downloaded the Coinomi wallet on February 14th 2019 and noticed that while the installer file was digitally signed, the resulting installed Windows application was not. He reported this to Coinomi (who have since added the signature) and nevertheless opted to use the application based on his trust in ‘several reputable websites’ that mention Coinomi and entered the seed phrase of his Exodus wallet into Coinomi to access the associated addresses."

"On February 22nd 2019, assets from cryptocurrency wallets associated with Al Maawali’s seed phrase were observed to have been transferred elsewhere. Al Maawali discovered that when a user of the Coinomi desktop wallet enters a seed phrase for wallet recovery, the app sent the text of that seed phrase to the Google API for spell-checking, and claims that this was the cause of his loss of funds. Coinomi acknowledges that the version of the wallet installed by Al Maawali had that feature (which has since been removed), but points out that (i) the seed phrase was sent encrypted via an HTTPS connection and (ii) Google’s API rejected the request as ill-formed for lack of an API key. Al Maawali’s contention is therefore that (i) Google stores information about such rejected API requests and that (ii) someone at Google must have had access to these records and recognized a 12-word seed phrase among them, which they then exploited to steal his funds."

"Multiple deposits via single-use intermediate wallets to 0xfde0e8207f0d29a659f318ffc0fa3e3eb1b4341a, which by all appearances belongs to a service that itself uses Binance with a deposit address at 0xe460167a64abc859869cc037caee2a3ab0ebfe70. There are further deposits via single-use intermediary wallets (likely belonging to the same service) to the same Binance address coming from the Consolidation Wallet. The same service also uses Huobi with a deposit address 0xbfc8a7da31c82a8a53ca34ae7969b8fbbe6bf86d."

"Note that none of these exchange accounts necessarily belong to the hacker, and some of them clearly don’t. Nonetheless, they provide a strong point of attack, and as investigators, we would immediately lay out this situation to law enforcement and ask for them to contact these exchanges to acquire information about the owners of these accounts, who are either suspects or services that the hacker used and that may have information about him or her."

"Upon review of the publicly available facts, it quickly became apparent to the CipherBlade team that Al Maawali’s conduct is grossly inappropriate to the situation. We receive multiple messages on a daily basis from people seeking help regarding scams or hacks, and so we understand very well that victims can be emotional and even irrational — in the worst case yet, we’ve been forced to prevent a fraud victim from attempting to murder a suspect. And indeed, even well-composed individuals are often at a loss as to what the proper course of action is when they become the victims of such crimes. Nevertheless, given the public nature of the present incident, it is worthwhile using it as a case study."

This is a global/international case not involving a specific country.

The background of the exchange platform, service, or individuals involved, as it would have been seen or understood at the time of the events.

Include:

• Known history of when and how the service was started.
• What problems does the company or service claim to solve?
• What marketing materials were used by the firm or business?
• Audits performed, and excerpts that may have been included.
• Business registration documents shown (fake or legitimate).
• How were people recruited to participate?
• Public warnings and announcements prior to the event.

Don't Include:

• Any wording which directly states or implies that the business is/was illegitimate, or that a vulnerability existed.
• Anything that wasn't reasonably knowable at the time of the event.

There could be more than one section here. If the same platform is involved with multiple incidents, then it can be linked to a main article page.

The Reality

This sections is included if a case involved deception or information that was unknown at the time. Examples include:

• When the service was actually started (if different than the "official story").
• Who actually ran a service and their own personal history.
• How the service was structured behind the scenes. (For example, there was no "trading bot".)
• Details of what audits reported and how vulnerabilities were missed during auditing.

What Happened

The specific events of the loss and how it came about. What actually happened to cause the loss and some of the events leading up to it.

Key Event Timeline - Coinomi Wallet Theft Warith Al Maawali

Date	Event	Description
February 18th, 2019 2:19:37 AM MST	Bitcoin Received	Bitcoin received in Warith's wallet.
March 22nd, 2019 5:19:06 AM MDT	Bitcoin Theft	Bitcoins were transfered on the blockchain.

Technical Details

This section includes specific detailed technical analysis of any security breaches which happened. What specific software vulnerabilities contributed to the problem and how were they exploited?

Total Amount Lost

The total amount lost has been estimated at $65,000 USD.

How much was lost and how was it calculated? If there are conflicting reports, which are accurate and where does the discrepancy lie?

Immediate Reactions

How did the various parties involved (firm, platform, management, and/or affected individual(s)) deal with the events? Were services shut down? Were announcements made? Were groups formed?

Ultimate Outcome

What was the end result? Was any investigation done? Were any individuals prosecuted? Was there a lawsuit? Was any tracing done?

Total Amount Recovered

There do not appear to have been any funds recovered in this case.

What funds were recovered? What funds were reimbursed for those affected users?

Ongoing Developments

What parts of this case are still remaining to be concluded?

Individual Prevention Policies

No specific policies for individual prevention have yet been identified in this case.

For the full list of how to protect your funds as an individual, check our Prevention Policies for Individuals guide.

Platform Prevention Policies

Policies for platforms to take to prevent this situation have not yet been selected in this case.

For the full list of how to protect your funds as a financial service, check our Prevention Policies for Platforms guide.

Regulatory Prevention Policies

No specific regulatory policies have yet been identified in this case.

For the full list of regulatory policies that can prevent loss, check our Prevention Policies for Regulators guide.