Topic: Are you afraid of hackers? - page 68. (Read 10496 times)

If you secure your account well you will never be hacked:
1. Always use copyrighted antivirus software: kasperkyle
2. Do not visit website infected link poison: sex web ...
3. Do not download unidentified files
4. Write the privatekey on paper, avoid copying or logging multiple into the wallet
5. Use wallet address only to view your account if you do not need to withdraw money
6. Compress privatekey files and set a password

Hackers are really bad set of people. That's why its good to be very careful and stay alert and protect all your accounts with all the securities you can thing of

the worst part of it is of course I am afraid I use safe wallets when I am absent and try not to hold money for too long.I think the computers we use are also effective

I want to know how hackers guessed my password in cryptopia.

 
How to protect your Bitcoin
1) Avoid address errors

One of the most attractive aspects of cryptocurrencies is the immediacy of payments. An address is all you need to make a payment to a seller, friend, or employee. Likewise, in order to receive payments in crypto, you only need to provide your address. There’s no middleman to verify the transaction, and as long as it’s a valid address, the payment will go through.

However, this can also lead to some terrible errors. A typo can send all your coins to the wrong address, accidentally enriching some random lucky person or a lurking hacker. And in case you didn’t know already, transactions made in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are irreversible, so there’s no way you can recover the funds you’ve sent to a wrong address.

The first order of business should be to protect yourself against… yourself. Avoid typing Bitcoin addresses manually when sending or receiving payments. It’s very easy to mistake an “0” for an “O,” a “1” for an “I,” or to miss and displace characters when typing in an address. Use QR codes when available, or copy and paste addresses when making or receiving payments.

Also, double-check your final address before submitting a payment. Even copying and pasting can go wrong if your computer is infected with address-manipulating malware. CryptoShuffler, for example, sits in the background and monitors your clipboard. Whenever you copy a Bitcoin address (presumably to paste it into an online payment application), it swaps it with its own address. Therefore, if you’re not wary, you’ll end up sending your money to a hacker’s address. CryptoShuffler has so far succeeded in collecting more than $150,000 for its developers.

2) Keep your Bitcoin wallet secure

Most hackers go after the money, and online Bitcoin wallets are attractive targets. A very real threat to avoid is phishing scams. Malicious actors will try to trick you into giving away your username and password by sending you links to fake login pages that mimic that of your online wallet. They could install keylogger malware that steals your password as you type it or by using some other devious method.

Having an updated antivirus software will protect you against most malware, but social engineering attacks such as well-targeted spear-phishing emails are more complicated and can get past even the best security tools. As a rule of thumb, never click on email-embedded links to your online wallet, even if they look like they point to your online wallet website. Either use a bookmark or type the address manually.
You should also enable two-factor authentication (2FA) on your online wallets. Two-factor authentication ties a physical device to your wallet, whether it’s a phone, an authenticator app such as Google Authenticator, or a physical key such as the Yubikey. Whenever a user wants to login to your account, they’ll have to present proof of the second factor. This could mean typing a one-time password that appears in the authenticator app or inserting their physical key into the computer. With two-factor authentication, even if a hacker manages to steal your password, they won’t be able to access your account.

Most wallets give you granular control over 2FA settings, such as applying it to login attempts, payments, or both.
Most online wallets also enable users to recover their password through the email that is linked to their account. This means that hackers will be able to break into your wallet if they hack your email. This stands true even if you’ve set up two-factor authentication for your wallet.

In order to minimize the threat of an email takeover, use a separate email for your online wallet, and use a secure provider such as ProtonMail or Lavabit.

3) Use an offline Bitcoin wallet

Before I tell you why you should use an offline wallet, here’s a brief primer on how cryptocurrency security works. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are based on public/private key encryption. For every Bitcoin address, there’s a public encryption key, which everyone can use to send you funds. There’s also a private key, which only you should be able to access. The private key is what enables you to make payments from your account to others. If someone gets hold of your private key, they will be able to siphon all your funds to their own address.

Most online wallets store your private keys and keep them secure. And to be fair, they have reliable security. But every once in awhile, even the most secure services fall victim to data breaches. In 2014, famous Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox was robbed of 850,000 bitcoins, worth $460 million at the time (in current BTC prices, the hack would be worth $9.5 billion). Last year, Bitfinex, another popular cryptocurrency exchange, lost $60 million worth of Bitcoin to hackers.

The point is, no matter how secure an online wallet is, it can be hacked. An alternative is to use an offline wallet, also known as a cold storage. Offline wallets give you full control of the private key and don’t store them in an online service. Trezor and Ledger are two popular offline hardware wallets. You can also opt for offline software wallets, such as Electrum and MyEtherWallet, or paper wallets.
Take note that, as Alexandr Nellson explains in this excellent Medium post, using an offline wallet securely is much more complicated than the online wallet experience, so you might want to keep a small amount of crypto in an online account for day-to-day transactions and have an offline wallet for large quantities of cryptocurrency.

Another consideration is that offline wallets can be a double-edged sword. They will protect you from data breaches at major service providers but will also give you full responsibility to protect your private keys. If you forget your wallet’s PIN code, lose the key or the seed, or destroy the private keys accidentally, no one will be able to help you and your bitcoins will be lost forever.

We might be laughing at offline wallets in a few years. You could compare it to earlier generations stashing their money under the mattress instead of putting it in a bank. But for the moment, cryptocurrencies are still a nascent field and they’re unregulated, so you’re pretty much on your own.

  Hopefully, this guide will help you navigate your way through the exciting world of cryptocurrencies. Go and make your digital fortune, and stay safe.

In my opinion, I as well as many people investing bitcoin are afraid being stolen from hackers attacks.  

***So, How Bitcoin Gets Stolen
The cryptocurrency exchange and mining marketplace NiceHash reported on Dec. 7 that it had been hacked, with more than $60 million in bitcoin — NiceHash's entire bitcoin "wallet," or holdings — stolen.
At the same time, phishing attacks against Bitcoin exchanges and private Bitcoin holders have mounted along with the price of bitcoin. The phishers are looking for administrative passwords or Bitcoin private keys, either of which would give them access to Bitcoin wallets.
Another concern is phony cryptocurrency apps. Last week, an iOS app that masqueraded as the official app for the MyEtherWallet exchange (which trades in the Ethereum cryptocurrency) appeared in the iOS App Store for several days. In November, fake Android apps for the cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex showed up in the Google Play Store.
People who installed the phony apps and thought they were legitimately connecting to the exchanges might have given up the passwords to their accounts. (Neither exchange was itself actually compromised.)

***Secure Your Devices to Secure Your Holdings
As with any other type of online financial transaction, ensuring that your money remains safe and secure has to be a top priority for both you and those with whom you trade. And as with so many other types of online dealings, cryptocurrency security isn't always something you can control.
"The security risk for any cryptocurrency is with the Bitcoin wallet and how secure the owner keeps it and any systems they use to make transactions," said Joseph Carson, chief security scientist at Thycotic, an information-security firm based in Washington, D.C. "When using cryptocurrencies, you need to make sure you take extra security to protect your wallet, keep it secret, add multifactor authentication and use encryption."
In other words, you need to take the same precautions with cryptocurrencies as you would use to protect other personal assets, such as your Social Security number, bank accounts and credit cards. Install and run antivirus software on your Windows PC, Mac and Android devices. Screen your emails carefully, and set up two-factor authentication on every online account that lets you. Encrypt your hard drives and mobile devices, and make regular backups of them.

***It's All About Protecting the Private Keys
How can you best safeguard your cryptocurrency holdings? The answer lies in the private key, a 256-bit number that unlocks a cryptocurrency wallet. That sensitive data, that investment, is all tied up in your private keys. You need your private keys to spend your bitcoins, so if someone gains access to your private keys, they can (and will) spend your bitcoins, and your bitcoins will be lost to you.
"Bitcoin hacking is a popular criminal enterprise, because holding bitcoin requires maintaining confidentiality of a bitcoin address's private key," said Andrew McDonnell, president of AsTech, a San Francisco-based security-consulting company. (The address is another number, derived from a private key, that establishes ownership of a unit of bitcoin.)
"If that key is compromised, the attackers can send all of the victim's bitcoin to themselves or an intermediary, or simply delete the key and digitally eliminate the bitcoin," McDonnell said. "Without the private key, as there is no central bitcoin authority by design, there is no way to claim ownership of a set of bitcoin."
Once you ensure that your private keys have a layer of protection, you need to safeguard your cryptocurrency wallet. A wallet is both a collection of one or more private keys and the software you use to interact with the cryptocurrency protocol.
"I would consider the same standards of safeguards for a Bitcoin wallet as I would for a mobile banking app," said Jared Nishikawa, director of immersive programs at SecureSet, a Denver-based cybersecurity academy. "Strong passwords, two-factor authentication, unlock code for the phone ... It is rare to hear about wallets being compromised if the private keys are not stored online somewhere."

***Trusting the Exchanges
To trust cryptocurrency exchanges requires an understanding of how they work. There are two different types of cryptocurrency exchanges.
A centralized exchange means that you trust the exchange with your cryptocurrency funds and your private keys, and you trade with the exchange for what basically amounts to IOUs. You allow the exchange to manage the security of your funds on your behalf. That can be beneficial if your own computer gets hacked or its hard drive dies, but it also makes exchanges prime targets for cybercriminals.
Centralized exchanges let you withdraw units of cryptocurrency and convert them to dollars or other "real" currencies, and also transfer units of cryptocurrency to your own privately held addresses of bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. The exchange will generally charge between 0.1 and 0.25 percent of a traded amount.
Decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges allow for simple and direct peer-to-peer trading of cryptocurrencies. At no time is the exchange in control of your funds. The decentralized exchanges are less convenient and more difficult to use for the average user than centralized exchanges are, but they often don't charge a brokerage fee.
More importantly, decentralized exchanges have no access to your private keys. If a decentralized exchange gets hacked, there would be no immediate way for the hackers to steal your private keys, said Nishikawa. But if your own machine gets hacked, your money is gone.
As for trusting a cryptocurrency exchange, whether it's centralized or decentralized, Nishikawa said you need to do your homework first by researching the exchange's reputation and history.
"I don't see a huge problem with using a decentralized exchange, but I would probably stay away from centralized exchanges," he advised. "However, if I had to use a centralized exchange, I would withdraw frequently to a private account not connected to the exchange, making sure not to leave a significant amount of money in the online account if I didn't have to."

***Retrieving Stolen Currency
Unfortunately, once cryptocurrency is stolen, it's gone for good. Remember, said Nishikawa, cryptocurrencies are digital and largely anonymous; therefore, the only things worth stealing are the private keys. Once those keys are stolen, the currency is almost always immediately spent.
Both consumers and businesses using and investing in cryptocurrency need to ensure that they can adequately protect and secure private keys and establish the integrity of any exchange involved in their transactions. After all, as Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies continue to increase in value, you can count on cybercriminals following the trend.

 

no need to be afraid as long as you do not tell password and also private key to others and not easy to distribute wallet address through sites that are not clear

Yes agree everybody is afraid. No one is not afraid of hackers because once you got hacked by someone you don't know all of your sacrifices will turn into nothing.

Yes. Everyone afraid in hackers. No one will happy if they stole your money easily. Thats why we need to be carefull in every information we put online to secure our money

I think everyone is afraid of hackers. Eveybody knows what hackers are capable of. They can take away in an instant all the money we have accumulated for so long. What we can do is to have a security installed to our devices and be cautious in visiting unknown sites. Our email is also a prime target of these hackers.

Yes it can't be helped to be afraid of this easygoing hackers and allies, and so I understand why many are wary of their activities. But this can be remedied with the security protocol of our wallets, or others that may apply and added security against hackers.
On my part, I am never afraid at present, as I don't have much in my account. MAybe in the future when I have a lot in it.  
Stay safe folks

I'm afraid of hackers because they can do what they want in internet. We collect little by little, but at minute they can steal all.

Yes, first things first and i do believe that the security comes from ourselves. Those wallets we used are not really secure if and only if we are careless enough to protect them too. Hackers only feed to those who are careless and are easily got deceived.

Yes of course I afraid of hackers because this is very difficult to earn money in this time from job or our business but this work have give money from work at you home by your computer.

I am holding coins for more than 5 years, and till now no hacker has managed to steal coins from my wallet. All you need to do is to follow a few basic security measures, such as 2FA. In 99% of the cases, if the coins are stolen, then your mistakes are to be blamed.

Yes, I am afraid of hackers. I am actually scared right now due to my friends were victimized with such acts. Their MEW were hacked and all of their holdings were stolen. 4 of my friends are now hopeless and really upset to what happened and they don’t know where to start again. I am monitoring my holdings every minute.

Guys, protect your wallets and review the links that you are going to access before you put your keys. Practice to use your json file + password instead of pkeys. It is also more advisable to use hardwallet for added security.

i think everyone is afraid of hackers when it comes with this digital format.. when it comes with digital investment we should be aware that hackers are always there waiting for an opening.

Of course im afraid of hackers and all of us are afraid.If it is small amount or billion we are responsible for our coins.Keep safe and secured install safe browsing and don't click phising sites that hackers can hacked.

Ofcourse I am afraid of this stuff. Not only me also afraid all of the holders are afraid of this type of stuff. Never install strange software, from unreliable developers. Malware is very easy to install on the machine from this software. Install the reputable anti-virus software.

I'm not afraid of them because they do not cause physical harm, but at the same time I'm afraid of maralno because they can steal my altcoyins.