Topic: Scammed? (Read 233 times)

Sometimes when you want paste address, another unknown address will replace in your clipboard you should check every time that you want send transactions,and when you see that somehow an unknown transaction sent from your wallet you can double spend to cancel that transaction before confirm

Sorry for your loss.  I'm afraid there's some malware being spread amongst Electrum users that's extracting private keys, and sending it a hacker.  Unfortunately there's no way to recover your losses, unless of course the hacker gets busted and his funds are seized.

Would you mind giving us more information about your situation?  What OS are you using, have you downloaded any crypto software in recent months, did you verify Electrum using the PGP signature, and would you mind sharing your transaction id?

I'm sorry for your loss, I'm pretty sure the hacker was waiting for you to receive any funds to step up and steal your BTC.

As already mentioned here in the Topic, it's likely that your PC is infected with malware that allowed the hacker to access all of your data. This means that it's not just a matter of your password being compromised, even if the hacker doesn't know your password, they may have been able to obtain your seed phrase if you stored it somewhere online or on your PC, which would allow them to easily access your wallet by importing your seed into their own Electrum wallet.

Long story short, it's important to never store your seed phrase on any online device. Using an air-gapped device or a hardware wallet is the safest option to ensure the security of your wallet and protect it from hacking attempts.

Once a transaction has received one confirmation, the money is typically considered irretrievable unless the hacker chooses to return the funds, which is highly unlikely since I never seen that happened before, so sadly to say yeah, your money is gone forever.

In addition to that, there have been no reported technical issues with Electrum in terms of wallet security. Therefore, it's highly unlikely that the problem lies with Electrum itself. It's more likely that the issue is due to inadequate security practices on your part.

At the upper right side on Electrum official site, click on community. You will see the Electrum page of Bitcointalk and Reddit. Even on this forum, the responses are very fast from Bitcointalk members.

The sad thing is that with a device like this: https://shop.hak5.org/products/key-croc
Anyone can plug it into your USB port and monitor everything you do and unless you saw it you would never know.

Yet again why a separate hardware wallet is the only way to go for real amounts of crypto.

-Dave

Most probably, the hacker gained access to your wallet's seed phrase and he was able to create a new wallet using your seed and so he didn't need to enter your password to do that. Password is only necessary if your .dat file is stolen and the hacker has two options: steal your password or brute-force it.

From your statement and what other users have said about your issue. I believe to get to the bottom of this you need to answer the question i'm about to ask you.
1 Who send you the fund?  
2 Where do you meet the person?
3 How well do you trust the person? Because there's a chance that the transaction was not confirmed when it was sent to you and later it was canceled by the sender just to fool you ^{this can be easily executed within 7mins}.
4 Could you provide the transaction ID?

How do you sure that you downloaded it from the official Electrum website?
Have you verified first if the Electrum is the legit one? I mean verifying the Electrum using the GPG tool before you install the Electrum? because there are lots of phishing sites out there without verifying the installer we can't guarantee that the Electrum you are using is legit or fake.

And what is your current virus protection tool?

Most of the times its someone close to you , like a partner or "friends" that do this type of thing.
Other than that possible you downloaded some sus software ,even small type of files.
 Screensharing on discord is known to expose much more information than you notice at first, hackers can replay the footage slowly and see everything thats on it.

Hope this helps, try submiting an appeal or freeze on the funds.

Electrum does not have a support team the way crypto centralized services do, so the way you'll run to Binance support if you have an issue with your Binance account isn't the same if you have issues with your Electrum wallet, and that's because Electrum is open source and everything about their code can be verified. You can only report the issue here like OP is doing or also in GitHub, so the community can assist you in finding what actually went wrong, but still it isn't possible for anyone to be exactly sure what happened.

There is no glitch or vulnerability in Electrum, the problem is from the op's operational security, and there are many reasons why their funds was stolen: it could be malware attack, exposed seed phrase or keys, fake electrum, etc.

That's not the case.
Electrum is an open-source wallet. The code has been reviewed by many people and there is no vulnerability. It's not like a close-source wallet that we don't know how the keys are generated and what's happening behind the scene.

Bitcoin transfer doesn’t contain any virus or whatsoever to gain access to your wallet. Probably it’s related on the external action that you do prior to receiving the Bitcoin. By any chance do you click any link that promises to received Bitcoin by doing certain task. You might accidentally downloaded a malware that exposed your private if the hacker can transfer your funds without your permission.


This is not a technical glitch if there’s a record that it’s already transferred to other account. A glitch doesn’t show a random bitcoin transfer.

It would have been much more easier if you would have just shared the BTC address or you could yourself see it on any block explorer.
If the coins are moved to a different address which you are unaware of then you can consider your coins lost.
Possible someone got the access to your wallet and was able to transfer the coins to their wallet.

Im sorry to hear that you have experience a loss of your BTC OP, it is possible that your wallet has been compromised. It might be phishing attacks, malware , or social engineering. Phishing attacks can trick you into disclosing your private key or seed phrase. Malware can infect your computer or mobile device and steal your private key or seed phrase when you enter it into your wallet. Social engineering tactics can persuade you to reveal your private key or seed phrase through fraudulent emails, phone calls, or messages.

It is also possible that there was a technical glitch or vulnerability in Electrum that allowed an attacker to steal your funds. However, without more information it is difficult to determine the cause of the issue. If you haven't already done so, you should immediately contact the support team for Electrum and report the incident.

Hope it helps, and again sorry for your loss.

Whatever security measurement you had, it was not enough. Somehow an unknown person got access of your seed phrase and they took the coins from you. You should not hope for anything. Sorry for your loss. When you are in crypto this is the risk you take unless you are knowledgeable enough to protect your virtual asset.

I suggest you to learn from this experience and in the future either use multi-sig wallet or use a hardware wallet. $5k+ worth of btc is a good amount and a hardware wallet would cost you not more than $100.

Check this. The same happened with another user recently.

Reinstalling the operating system isn't enough. You should format your hard drive completely and reinstall your operating system after that.
With doing this, you would remove any malware from your hard drive, but there won't be any guarantee that the same thing won't happen again. If you want to be completely secure, you should use electrum offline on an airgapped device.

You can check the GPG signature in electrum to make sure the app is downloaded from the official website. - [GUIDE] How to Safely Download and Verify Electrum [Guide] (this had to be done before making a deposit to the wallet).

Although this will not change the situation in any way, and the stolen bitcoin can't be returned. But it will help to understand where the mistake was made or to make sure that the attack vector was from a different direction, and not from a fake electrum.

~5000$ is a lot of money, and taking into account long-term storage, it could become even more impressive. But what can you do - nothing. This happens if you are greedy for ~100-200$ hardware wallet, that just wouldn't let this misfortune happen to you. Either spend 100$ or lose 5000$. What will be your choice?

Your funds are gone and that's the bitter truth. An hacker has stolen all the funds from your wallet and transferred all your BTC to his address. The transactions made via Bitcoin are irreversible and all the funds are now in his possession. You can not do anything because the event has already happened.

In online world anything can happen, I recommend you to save yourself from further attacks by reinstalling your operating system, and by changing the passwords of your accounts. You should also change your bank account passwords if you have saved those on your pc or smartphone.

If you really don't want to lose anything else then follow the above mentioned instructions. I am very sorry for your loss and I feel really bad for the things that happened to you, but unfortunately I can not do anything to reverse your loss no one else can do that either. Other than that I recommend you to be careful next time as events like this can happen anytime in online world. Always keep your passwords and seed phrases to your self to be on the safe side.

No one can know that whether the transaction has been made automatically or manually.
As I said in my previous post, "possibly self-transfer" doesn't give you any information about what caused the fund to be stolen. Blockstream.info marks transactions as "possibly self-transfer" if it includes only 1 output. That's all.

I mean that I don´t use a sticky note app at all to store my passwords.
I believe I downloaded it from the "official" Electrum website
I have not given the seed phrase to anyone
I use a virus system.

It says "possibly self-transfer" on blockstream.info and seems to have automatically been transferred upon receiving the funds.
"lock time 787764"