How to close/lock/secure wallet | Bitcointalksearch.org

Saint-loup

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Quote from: dkbit98 on January 01, 2025, 02:32:03 PM

Hacked how exactly?
You need to be more specific and say if your seed words or private key was compromised or not.
I wouldn't use any wallet on your device affected with this hack, and I would generate new mnemonic seed on different offline device.
You can also use open source hardware wallets in combination with electrum wallet for for improved security.

As it has been said above by some users, she has already told her story in a previous thread : https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--5506537 The theft is quite significant: 0.04BTC
But I agree with you, instead of telling her to format her computer and to reinstall all her softwares and datas again while she was already reluctant to do it 5 months ago. It's certainly more useful to advise her to just buy a hardware wallet, some are rather cheap now.

@pinkpajama99 if you need to do a transaction urgently, do it from an exchange or install a wallet on your smartphone but it's not safe anymore to use your computer for that IMO. Buy a hardware wallet when you can, it will let you use Electrum on your computer again while staying totally safe.

dkbit98

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Quote from: pinkpajama99 on December 31, 2024, 04:07:39 PM

Please no spanking but my bitcoin wallet got hacked. I'm fine. But do I need to disabled it or what do I need to do? There's no money in it but I don't know how much private info.

Hacked how exactly?
You need to be more specific and say if your seed words or private key was compromised or not.
I wouldn't use any wallet on your device affected with this hack, and I would generate new mnemonic seed on different offline device.
You can also use open source hardware wallets in combination with electrum wallet for for improved security.

Findingnemo

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Just backup the seeds or private keys of address used and then delete the wallet and better flash the OS with clean and legitimate software to ensure no malware present in your system that might actually lead to the compromise of your wallet.

Once you done it then install the wallet from official website and verify the signature before loading the wallet, once you create the wallet keep the seed backup in secured location and don't install anything that you are not sure whether it's completely safe.

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Quote from: pinkpajama99 on December 31, 2024, 04:07:39 PM

Please no spanking but my bitcoin wallet got hacked. I'm fine. But do I need to disabled it or what do I need to do? There's no money in it but I don't know how much private info.

Do I just delete or do I need to do something more. Thanks.

As stated by reply on your previous thread, re-install OS on your computer. Make sure the OS installer is real/clean.

Quote from: Hatchy on December 31, 2024, 04:11:49 PM

What private info? You don't share any personal details when create a wallet(apart from centralized systems).. just save your keys and that's all. Since there's no coin in it and it already got hacked like you said, its best to do away with the wallet and Create a new one.. you don't have to do anything else mate, just delete the wallet from your device and don't use it any more..

Looking at OP's previous thread (My Electrum wallet says I have no Bitcoin), OP add note/description to some transaction. So there's possibility the hacker may have copy of such note/description which may reduce/harm OP's privacy.

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Quote from: pinkpajama99 on December 31, 2024, 04:07:39 PM

Please no spanking but my bitcoin wallet got hacked. I'm fine. But do I need to disabled it or what do I need to do? There's no money in it but I don't know how much private info.

You can delete it as others suggested but you must keep a backup (like its seed phrase or the wallet file) in case you'll need something from it in the future.
As our founder mentioned; do not delete wallets, "just in case".

Your goal is to prevent you from accidentally using any address from that compromised wallet.
So properly name the backups and remove your direct access to that wallet.

As for private info, your wallet is saved in your drive in 'wallets' folder inside electrum's datadir, not in any server.
Once you delete it, no one will know its seed, private keys, addresses and the labels that you've put on your transactions,
For the transactions, those are all saved in each Bitcoin node's blockchain which is publicly available (excluding the labels since it's only saved in your wallet)
But no one will know which ones belong to you unless you did something to get those linked to your identity.

But instead of just deleting the wallet, do a complete "zero-fill" on the drive and reinstall your OS after you made backups of your important files.
For example, in Windows it can be performed by not ticking "Quick Format", because otherwise, the data in your disk (any private data in your wallet) are still recoverable until its overwritten.

hosseinimr93

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Quote from: Charles-Tim on December 31, 2024, 07:05:16 PM

@Hatchy, Zaguru12, hosseinimr93. I do not understand OP at all. I think the only way a wallet can be known to have been compromised is when coin has been stolen, but OP did not have any coins on the wallet.

OP created another topic in August 2024. According to that topic, his fund was stolen and that happened probably due to his computer getting infected with a malware.
Here is relevant topic: My Electrum wallet says I have no Bitcoin.

Quote from: Charles-Tim on December 31, 2024, 07:05:16 PM

@pinkpajama99, how did you know your wallet has been compromised despite that the wallet was not funded?

OP probably means that the wallet is now empty, not that it has never been funded.

Charles-Tim

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@Hatchy, Zaguru12, hosseinimr93. I do not understand OP at all. I think the only way a wallet can be known to have been compromised is when coin has been stolen, but OP did not have any coins on the wallet. How will he know that the wallet was compromised or not?

@pinkpajama99, how did you know your wallet has been compromised despite that the wallet was not funded?

hosseinimr93

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Since your wallet was hacked, your device was probably infected with a malware and now it's not safe to use that device without cleaning it.
Format your hard drive and reinstall your operating system. You will not secure your device with just deleting the hacked wallet.

Zaguru12

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Quote from: pinkpajama99 on December 31, 2024, 04:07:39 PM

Please no spanking but my bitcoin wallet got hacked. I'm fine. But do I need to disabled it or what do I need to do? There's no money in it but I don't know how much private info.

Do I just delete or do I need to do something more. Thanks.

No you don’t need to do anything other than just to forget about the details of the wallet, but the device which actually is where the wallet is on should what need cleansing depending on the kind of attack which was used on the wallet, if it was malware installed into the device then you can not just abandoned the wallet alone but will need to format the device which sometimes doesn’t even work for some malwares so will need even a change of hard disk or such.

So before abandoning the infected wallet you must find out how it got hacked and then cleanse the device to avoid future occurrence

Stalker22

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Quote from: pinkpajama99 on December 31, 2024, 04:07:39 PM

Do I just delete or do I need to do something more. Thanks.

It depends. What kind of wallet is it? Was it a private, self-custody wallet or maybe part of a custodial service? You need to give us a little more information. How do you know your wallet was hacked?

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Quote from: pinkpajama99 on December 31, 2024, 04:07:39 PM

Please no spanking but my bitcoin wallet got hacked. I'm fine. But do I need to disabled it or what do I need to do? There's no money in it but I don't know how much private info.

Do I just delete or do I need to do something more. Thanks.

So how do you know your wallet got hacked? Normally people would discover this if there's money in it and it gets stolen by the hacker.

Bitcoin wallets do not record any private information, so this risk is non-existent.

You can make a fresh wallet and completely discard the old one. It is safe, and there are no side effects.

If you feel the hacking may have originated from a trojan or other malware, you may want to do a thorough cleanup of your device. If you're planning to move substantial amounts of btc / other crypto consider getting a hardware wallet or an air-gapped one.

Hatchy

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What private info? You don't share any personal details when create a wallet(apart from centralized systems).. just save your keys and that's all. Since there's no coin in it and it already got hacked like you said, its best to do away with the wallet and Create a new one.. you don't have to do anything else mate, just delete the wallet from your device and don't use it any more..

pinkpajama99

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Please no spanking but my bitcoin wallet got hacked. I'm fine. But do I need to disabled it or what do I need to do? There's no money in it but I don't know how much private info.

Do I just delete or do I need to do something more. Thanks.

Topic: How to close/lock/secure wallet (Read 159 times)