Fake wallet update steals 1400 Bitcoin ($16 million) from Electrum user

Github users have identified the wallets where the scammer has transferred stolen Bitcoin.

Github users have identified the wallets where the scammer has transferred stolen Bitcoin.

There are 3 types of regrets in Bitcoin. One is of those who brought it early on but then sold it only to watch it skyrocket (remembering the 10,000 Bitcoins pizza man), or the individual who threw away his hard disk with $121 million worth of Bitcoin. And then we have those who through one simple mistake lost all of their holdings.

In a case of the latter, recently, we came across someone who alleges that they lost 1400 BTC, also known as FOURTEEN HUNDRED BITCOINS, in a scam.

Explaining the incident to the community on Github, the user stated that the entire ordeal happened when they tried to access their old funds which were in an Electrum wallet:

The update which they reference in the comment above was a fake one which led the user to install a fake version of the Electrum wallet. Clarified by a user named gits7r who looks like an Electrum contributor, they explain further:

Because of how peer discovery works in Electrum, there is not much we can do for old versions, since we can’t prevent them with 100% success rate to run into a malicious server. This is because, unlike other lightweight wallets, Electrum decided to not have only few harcoded servers that will be responsible for the privacy of all users, and act as single point of failure, but instead allow users to run their own servers or use servers that they trust.

For the time being though, in order to recover the funds or possibly limit their movement, the victim has reported the case to a firm named Coinfirm that specializes in Blockchain analytics. Users on Github also offered plenty of support with one even pointing out the entire list of addresses where the stolen funds had been moved to:

Additionally, Binance’s CEO also took prompt action serving as a sense of comfort:

https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1300061833299070976

To conclude, for the future, every user is advised to check the signature of every new version they install of any such wallet client. This can help verify the true source of the software you are installing and guard against fake ones.

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