Topic: 90 BTC stolen! - page 10. (Read 14018 times)

for anyone else concerned about losing their money I highly recommend the following free way to secure your wallet.

1) Install True Crypt on your PC/laptop and create an encrypted volume that is only mounted manually.
2) Install Virtual Box.
3) Create A Linux virtual machine inside the encrypted volume using a clean install of a popular distro (xubuntu etc)   (I tried ubuntu but its a bitch to get working with Virtual box)
4) Install Armoury, Bitcoin Client, Litecoin etc into the linux virtual machine (whatever trusted wallets you want)
5) Create your encrypted/password protected armory, litecoin and other wallets inside the virtual machine.
6) do not use the virtual machine for anything other than Sending and receiving crypto transactions, do not install anything other than the bare essential tools you need and do not surf the internet with it.

from inside the virtual machine you should also be able to create a paper wallet for cold storage.

NOTE: you will need about 80gb of space if you want to store the entire bitcoin and litecoin blockchains inside a virtual machine.
when you are not using the virtual machine you can pause it (remembering to always Pause when the screen is locked) and dismount the encrypted volume.

if you want to back up all your money all you need to do is copy the encrypted volume to another PC or external HD and  locate the backup far away from your PC (failsafe incase of fire/robbery etc)

this is the most secure way that I have found to protect your Coins while keeping them fairly accessible and safely backed up.

all the tools above are FREE. it only takes your time to learn how to use them properly.

and if you think its too much effort.. I would suggest that its probably not too much effort to secure a few thousand dollars worth of BTC which could be worth 10X that in the coming years.

Maybe the password is too simple, or you have a keylogger
Sorry I can't help much here...

My wallets are all encrypted.

Sorry to hear your loss.

Have your wallets been encrypted?
Have you stored some unencrypted backups somewhere online (emails / dropbox / etc)?

I already send out my BTC left. Thank you.

Could it be that you just sent the coins to yourself / between two wallets?
Anyway, if you have 100 coins get them off your computer NOW, and investigate later.

And the wallet was not emptied, with more than 100 BTC left not taken, Weird!

nope, sorry. transaction went through (250 confirms). the arrows are a feature of the wallet, and has nothing to do with the system itself.

What do you mean by a "double-direction arrow"? Bitcoin transactions can't be reversed.

Now I just want to know how the wallet summary can show a double-direction arrow and a n/a address?
Doesn't that obviously indicate that the transaction is invalid and so it should be reversed by the system?

I was thinking this aswell, weird.

Armory makes all this so easy is laughable. It even gives you instructions the first time you run it.

Exactly. Don't forget bitcoin is still in beta, which obviously means it's not quite ready for the average user, and we can't stand watch over everyone.

Ouch sorry to hear about your loss.

The sad reality is the coins are gone. If your local police department is tech savy enough I suppose you could contact them and file a report and maybe if these people ever use an exchange with their real name to cash out they could be caught. It's unlikely police are willing or equipped to do such things at this time in the bitcoin economy/world.

As other have suggested, learn from the mistake and in the future try to keep your coins offline.  Also your computer could very well be compromised right now so you shouldn't use it for anything right now that you consider personal or sensitive until you know for certain that your computer is free of malware/viruses.

Now I just want to know how the wallet summary can show a double-direction arrow and a n/a address?
Doesn't that obviously indicate that the transaction is invalid and so it should be reversed by the system?

Well, you could contact your dispute-resolution organisation or rights-enforcement agency... oh wait, we don't live in that kind of society (yet?).

I just did and have done several times in the past, you can also find tutorials lying around on how to store your wallet offline, also even doing a simple backup isn't difficult, you just get the wallet up and then go file > backup wallet and then stick the .DAT file in a drive somewhere you hardly use.

What more do you expect us to do exactly? We can't protect people from their own stupidity.

Exactly!  Even if people do see warnings online to use an offline wallet (which many do not), that sure as hell doesn't mean they know how to do it correctly.  And I'm sure the rebuttal will be: "well if they can't do that they shouldn't be using bitcoin."  Which is a great response - if you want to repress the expansion of bitcoin.  

there has actually been some scamming alt coins which has a trojan in their wallet program to steal your btc wallet.dat..

thats why any altcoins i get go to coinex.pw and get converted to btc, and then only store btc long term away from exchanges

making cold storage easy should be a goal => building a custom linux distro + raspberry PI + printer.


sorry for your loss, but playing law enforcement is not a good idea.

I thought a double-direction arrow and "n/a" in the transaction field in Bitcoin-Qt represented a transaction between addresses within the same wallet?