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Hackers Steal $16M in Bitcoin Stolen from a Single Wallet In Phishing Attack

DeFi

Hackers stole 1,400 BTC (about $16 million) from a single wallet.

The latest hack victim suffered a loss of 1,400 BTC (estimated around $16 million). The victim was a long-time holder of the king coin. He narrated the story on GitHub using the screen name ‘1400BitcoinStolen’.

According to the story, the scam occurred when he tried to move his Bitcoins to his Ethereum wallet, Electrum. The app developers had updated its security which the victim was not aware of. When he initiated the transfer, he was prompted to do a security update.

The unsuspecting victim did not know that the supposed security update was actually a phishing software. By clicking on the update, he had given the hackers access to his wallet. 1,400 BTC was immediately transferred to an unknown wallet. 

In response to the story, Ben Kaufman, a software engineer, explained on Twitter that the hackers “set up a public Electrum Server, which was tweaked so that instead of propagating the user’s transaction as it should, it always returns a malicious error message directing the Electrum clients to a phishing website to “upgrade” their Electrum version”, which was what happened to 1400BitcoinStolen.

In the past few months, authorities from around the world have been capturing and prosecuting crypto hackers. While that may imply that crypto is now a safer investment, hackers are constantly exploiting ways to steal precious crypto coins.

Image Credits: Pixabay

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