Author

Topic: BEWARE OF FAKE WALLETS! Look carefully where you download from! (Read 1134 times)

legendary
Activity: 1610
Merit: 1000
Crackpot Idealist
lol this post is HIGHlarious!

1. if you want to sell a/v software, just say so. save me the waste of time of reading your commercial

2. pushing third party software to protect people from themselves is not really a solution. if you want to help people, you should write a detailed and easy to follow guide on compiling wallets from source.

3. "The malware infected wallet phenomena appears to be rather new," yeah sure bud.
sr. member
Activity: 310
Merit: 250
If you decide to download and install a wallet always use a download link from a post by the dev. Never use a link in a post by someone else quoting the dev's post.
legendary
Activity: 861
Merit: 1000
I usually do not download the client's wallet, because takes up too much computer memory
The more convenient online wallet
legendary
Activity: 2702
Merit: 1064
Juicin' crypto
so true.  good post OP. i got burned before.

bitbay had one in its original link.  im not sure who posted it.
full member
Activity: 210
Merit: 101
And thats precisely why I dont immediately download every new altcoin wallet that is compiled beforehand, I only ever compile from source and thats after briefing going through the code too

But all users are not apt to do this so maybe it's best if you must download use a virtual machine and keep anything related to bitcoin or important data elsewhere.

Exactly. In the long run, easy and trustworthy solutions are needed if cryptos are to become mainstream.

- Jyri
--
Altcoin.Center
hero member
Activity: 1036
Merit: 504
Becoming legend, but I took merit to the knee :(
And thats precisely why I dont immediately download every new altcoin wallet that is compiled beforehand, I only ever compile from source and thats after briefing going through the code too

But all users are not apt to do this so maybe it's best if you must download use a virtual machine and keep anything related to bitcoin or important data elsewhere.

Than again not everyone knows how to enable VT in bios, or use VMWare Player or VirtualBox hahas, probably why some newbies get tricked into installing trojans all the time
hero member
Activity: 672
Merit: 501
And thats precisely why I dont immediately download every new altcoin wallet that is compiled beforehand, I only ever compile from source and thats after briefing going through the code too

But all users are not apt to do this so maybe it's best if you must download use a virtual machine and keep anything related to bitcoin or important data elsewhere.
full member
Activity: 210
Merit: 101
And thats precisely why I dont immediately download every new altcoin wallet that is compiled beforehand, I only ever compile from source and thats after briefing going through the code too

Indeed!

- Jyri
--
Altcoin.Center
hero member
Activity: 1036
Merit: 504
Becoming legend, but I took merit to the knee :(
And thats precisely why I dont immediately download every new altcoin wallet that is compiled beforehand, I only ever compile from source and thats after briefing going through the code too
full member
Activity: 210
Merit: 101
bitbay had a link with fake/hacker wallet it within their original thread.  no idea who posted it or if it's still there.  to those that do this...i hope you die a slow and painful death.

Yeah, unfortunately it's not guaranteed that the posts are genuine either.

As irritating as it is that some actually do this kind of crap, it's after all good to have the problem solved anyways. If it wasn't coin-stealing punks then it would be organized crime, governmental agencies or someone else alike. To fight any and all fake wallet based attacks against cryptos and their users, some form(s) of new trust systems need to be created. Centralized approach would be easy, but developing a truly working and fully P2P version may take a while. PGP and asymmetric crypto in general can fortunately be applied to different proof of trust kind of issues rather easily.

- Jyri
--
Altcoin.Center
legendary
Activity: 2702
Merit: 1064
Juicin' crypto
bitbay had a link with fake/hacker wallet it within their original thread.  no idea who posted it or if it's still there.  to those that do this...i hope you die a slow and painful death.
full member
Activity: 210
Merit: 101
Dear crypto community,

it has come to our attention that several crypto currency projects have been targeted with fake, trojaned coin-stealing wallets.

Someone or someones has/have compiled their own "fixed" version of the wallets, based on the original source code but building in couple of nasty features.

The fake wallets have installed a remote access backdoor to the PC they've been ran on.

In addition to that, they've also sent user's funds to attacker's addresses.

This far only Windows versions have been seen, but it would be stupid to assume fake Linux and Mac OS X wallets would not pop up eventually.

Altcoin.Center is working with the Finnish hard core anti-malware company F-Secure to come up with solutions to the problem.

F-Secure's anti-virus programs already detect the first trojaned wallet we found. If any new cases turn up, we would be very grateful to have samples of them available ASAP. In fact we're so keen to having new fake wallets analyzed right away that we offer a bounty: a fully free license of F-Secure Safe (1 year, 3 devices, value 59.95 €) for anyone who provides us with a previously unknown/undetected fake malware wallet.

Altcoin.Center is also looking into different ways of providing proof of wallet authenticity through a fully distributed process. Until that process is ready and usable, we'll bring in some temporary assistance by, for example, announcing valid wallet checksums (MD5 and SHA1) through our DNS system. Eventually, our goal is to create a P2P based trust solution that heavily uses PGP to do things such as sign all the blocks, sign other wallet's pgp keys, check file trust level using pgp signatures, and so forth.

We'll also be providing thorough yet easy to follow instructions on how to seriously harden the security of any Windows, Mac OS X or Linux machine. We have decades of experience of secure systems design in the company, and intend to share that information with everyone free of charge and free to use.

Remember: Always carefully check where you download your crypto wallets from! Always use only the download addresses announced by each crypto project's official developer(s). Beware forum posts with quotes - the links inside the quotes may have been altered.

The malware infected wallet phenomena appears to be rather new, and will in my educated guesstimate grow into a significant problem with nastier built-in "features" added to the wallets and more clever means crafted to make users fall into installing them.

Stay awake - no fear! Wink

- Jyri
--
Altcoin.Center

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