Bitcoin Forum

How hard is it to hack an online wallet?
Can your transactions be stuck in limbo without confirmation?

bitcoin itself is pretty safe if you know how to use it properly.
But a new user has many ways of doing something bad and letting hackers take his bitcoins.
The problem is not bitcoin but the user

Bitcoin is safe, the user who uses bitcoins should be cautious of using bitcoins. Most of the losses in bitcoins are made up of users who didn't make sure of how secure their assets are under their control.

an online service is as vulnerable as any online service..
sony got hacked
apple got hacked
even banks, governments, and fbi sites got hacked.

bitcoin is not vulnerable. but stupid website creators are. this is why you are safer using the actual bitcoin-core client, moreso then using your online bank or buying something on apple/sony/walmart using ur debitcard on their site

The issue is more in how it's used rather than the core itself.  There's a reason why banks hire security experts and buy hardware to secure their infrastructure.  Letting a startup hold your money is probably not a good idea.

It is possible to hack an online wallet but the probabilities depends from the wallet. For example I use coinbase. This wallet don't hold bitcoins in online wallets but offline. So the hacker even if crack something cannot steal nothing. Anyhow the hacking of a bitcoin wallet is less than the robbery of a bank.

Any transaction cannot be get stuck. Soon or later every satoshi sent arrive in its destination. The few amounts maybe later, but arrive. There are problems with the malleability but partially are resolved and for sure will be resolved in the other versions of Bitcoin Core.

It's possible to hack an online wallet, but it's almost impossible to hack a wallet installed on your computer if you have also installed up to date antivirus software and a firewall. If you control your Bitcoin private key generated by your wallet installed on your computer then your Bitcoins cannot be stolen by directly hacking your Bitcoin wallet. The only way your Bitcoins stored on your computer can be stolen is if your computer gets hacked, or infected with a virus.

Online wallets are sometimes hacked, but whoever runs the online wallet controls your Bitcoins, and how secure the wallet is depends on their coding skills.

Bitcoin itself is pretty darned secure. The meatbags who use it will always be the weakest link by leaving themselves vulnerable to being caught out. I don't think an online wallet is ever a great idea when there's no shortage of better alternatives.

As safe as you want it to be... Why? ...Well it's easy ::

1. If you leave a lot of money in there, you will become a bigger target. {My motto ~ Keep online wallets for coffee payments}
2. If you chose not to enable 2FA for some reason, you paint a target on your back, and it is not a question IF you will get hacked, but rather when you will get hacked}
3. Keep your main stash in cold storage, away from the internet

Use these 3 tips and you will not have huge losses when you do get hacked..  ::)

Bitcoin is one of the safest 'financial instruments' I know off. Its however not idiot proof.

As others have already stated, it can be as secure as you want it to be. Keep most of your coins offline and only expose what you are willing to lose to the world i.e. online/hot wallets.

Possible an online wallet is get hack, this is all about human error. bitcoin it self can't get hack, what's purpose, even this is open source code.

Just don't use online wallet, better to keep your coins on cold storage.

it's not bitcoin at dangerous, unless you want to talk about its random vulnerability that may happen form time to time, and only make it stronger

but more the device in which it is used, there are also weakness of bitcoin, which are vastly known https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses

But more possible inside job involve to hack online wallet because it required more technical information about server to comprised any online wallet, for long term hold only cold storage is better option to keep safe your coins.

Bitcoin is really safe but i mostly use online wallet to use my coins for some online activities.

Nothing bad can happen if you keep your stack online. Would you keep your stack of gold in the middle of the street inside a box? No, evne if its inside a box, it's "out there". So what you do is, you take with you what you will use (online wallet) and keep the rest inside a box and inside your home (offline wallet).

as far as i know its not too hard to hack online wallets but if you have a paper or hardware wallet its nearly impossible to do that

nice logic. one suggestion from me pilscoop, if you want to hack an online wallet try to watch Mr. Robot movie  8)
everything have a risk include bitcoin itself

Exactly. That's why people who want to store their mass of bitcoins in a secure place always obsess over paper wallets, and reputable and trustworthy escrows usually buy a Trezor hardware wallet to store escrow funds.

Any other wallet (such as web wallets or wallets on your computer) are extremely vulnerable and you can never assume that they are safe unless they've never touched the internet before.

bitcoin into on itself is not vulnerable. The web wallets and hard wallets are.

Just spread out your bitcoins across several different wallets. If one gets done in you have others to continue with.

online bitcoin related services are always a loved target for hacker thiefs. that's why you should avoid using them as much as possible.

Basically bitcoin is safe, but the transaction can not be confirmed if the "stress test" is alive at that time.
So in generally bitcoin is safe, but the way how you generate the address, wallet, private keys this can be dangerous.
Recently brainwallet addresses were 'hacked', the sensitive information has been bruteforced and people lost their bitcoin.

Bitcoin as a network and an algorithm is as safe as it can be. Almost 7 years running without any huge problems with surely many hackers all over the world that tried to harm it.

Where the problems come are the third parties wallets, software, exchanges, web wallets and also user ignorance. Also let's not forget malware. This is where all of the Bitcoin problems arise!

Wallets can be hacked no matter what. I would do some research and learn how to make your own backups. Don't put it all in one place.

Bitcoin is the safest one but, the wallets are vulnerable. Each and every wallet having possibility to became hacked. Even cold wallets beacuse, nowadays virus doesn't needs internet to spread -> http://thenextweb.com/apple/2015/08/04/macs-are-no-longer-immune-to-attacks-as-a-new-self-replicating-firmware-worm-demonstrates/

the private keys are safe if only you know what they are , dont use a webwallet where a 3rd party is in control of the keys because then u arent trusting bitcoin, you are trusting the 3rd party

I was looking for the right post to quote...  :)

I once did have a problem with blockchain.info.  My wallet got emptied by them!  I believe I was using their 2FA (which I could never get to work right) at that time, but maybe not.  I do not know exactly what happened, but I did get my BTC back after a little back & forth with them.  It might have been some kind of programming error while they were maintaining (or upgrading) something.  Others had that same problem that night.

That taught me to keep the large bulk of my BTC in my Trezor and Ledger Nano.  My BTC holdings on the two devices is roughly 50/50.

It's quite safe to put your money on wallet. Nothing bad can happen if you keep your stack online.
Would you keep your stack of gold in the middle of the street inside a box? Sure not, even if it's inside a box, it's "out there".

If you really worry about your online wallet, you can make offline wallet.

Bitcoin for people new to it isnt that safe atm for various reasons, even if you get everything right you can find your money becomes worthless.  We have been stable for a while now though which is great!

Once you get your bitcoin in your wallet i think you are safe.
But try not be a victim of hackers that may send you different emails saying that we need the private key.
Or sometimes they ask to export your wallet un-encrypted, by this way you can lose all your bitcoins.

as long as you are doing the transaction signing online it is not safe :)

you should learn how to make an offline wallet, sign a transaction on that offline wallet and then broadcast it on another PC which is online.

In theory nothing is completely safe. There is always risk - it's just how much risk your comfortable taking and whether the trade-offs are worth it.

For most people they'd either be comfortable having their wallet on their computer. It's better than having it on an online wallet but obviously not as good as cold storage or a hardware wallet. Cold wallets are too much hassle for small transactions - and if you deal with BTC on a daily basis and in different locations - an online wallet for small transactions (i.e. hot wallet) could easily be justified.

Bitcoin is very safe if you know how to use it and store it. Depending on the type of use you want to give it you will need use different kinds of storing.

Bitcoin's safety is proportional with users intelligence. Sadly, there are still alot of people that don't quite understand how it works, and those who have no sence of security,
so they end up being robbed or/and scammed. With time, there's no doubt the levels will rise, and we no longer will have such problems.

Yes this is sad but true in any situation. Build a fortress and eventually there will be a point of access over time.
But it can be fortified if found out before it is accessed not after to keep it from happening.

This is the most important quote for people that use bitcoin to understand.


An intelligent user is an informed user of the pitfalls that anything bestows. With the good comes the bad. Just have to be aware where those bad things are and how to deal with them once encountered so they don't fall into a trap like others have fallen into before them.

There are certain exploits that an experienced coder could do to somehow disrupt the whole network, just like the transaction malleability problem. Bitcoin. though secure, still has an attack vector on its code, but exploiting it seems to unlikely and only devs with knowledge in this could use it for their own gains or fix it. Remember the recent surge of unconfirmed tx? That is the malleability problem exploited by a single user.

The bitcoin itself is pretty secure, sometimes most of the people who got their btc wallet hacked or stole  is on their own fault
If you are using online wallet and wanted to beef up the security try to turn on 2FA
:)

If an online wallet is hacked that doesn't mean that you can loose for sure your bitcoins. Depends in which online wallet they are stored. I use Coinbase and this wallet keep up to 97% of customer funds stored offline. So even if hacked the hacker will have almost nothing (if will have the possibility or the chance to find those 3% bitcoin remain online). This is the first thing. The second is that no one from the part of wallet (employee, manager, owner or whatever it will the human kind which work with Coinbase) have no possibility to touch my bitcoins. According to Coinbase Blog of October 29, 2014 with the title "Introducing Multisig Vault - You Can Now Control Your Own Private Keys On Coinbase":

"Our new Multisig Vault gives the customer complete control of their own private keys.  Coinbase has no ability to move funds (which means you are safe from Coinbase being hacked, going bankrupt, or anyone seizing your bitcoin).  It also means that you as a customer have much greater responsibility in storing your backup key securely.  If you lose this backup and forget your multisig password, Coinbase cannot help you recover your bitcoin.  For this reason, we only recommend this feature for advanced users."

I don't use this Multisig because I am not an advanced user. But even the hacking of the wallet itself is very hard to be made. In my account can be entered only after the put of the code which come to my phone or to my account at Authy (which have my phone number). So it is not very easy. It is not at all easy. But this is not all. Bitcoin stored on their servers is covered by their insurance policy. According to their site:

"Coinbase is insured against employee theft and hacking in an amount that exceeds the average value of online bitcoin it holds at any given time. Specifically, Coinbase's insurance policy would respond in the event that bitcoin stored in Coinbase was lost or stolen as a result of a breach of our physical security, cyber security, or as a result of employee theft."

"Coinbase has held this insurance since November 2013 with highly rated carriers (S&P rating of A+ or A.M. Best Rating of A XV or higher)."

Any online wallet/bank can be hacked and it's easy for hackers but not for a lay man. It's better to use wallets that require authorization by 2 or more account holders/users to withdraw the bitcoins or wallets like Xapo which require me to enter an OTP while logging in the wallet. It's not easy to get the PWD and the OTP of a person's mobile number to hack a Xapo wallet but there can be extreme cases.

With regards to transactions that aren't confirmed, the transaction is just not counted as there are users who have faced this and they instead try the double spend method to recover their coins else the coins are just stuck. No clue when such transactions get cancelled by the network.

Don't forget that everything can be hacked. Once it somebody created, there would be someone who would be able to hack it, I am sure. So it is like a bank, it would be stupid to put all your savements in one place and hope that it's 100% secure and nobody would touch it except you. I recommend you to use both offline and online wallets.

Am I considered as stupid even this one place hold my bitcoins offline and not online and if hacked, the hacker cannot find nothing or only few satoshi? Or even if this place will replace my bitcoins if those "were lost or stolen as a result of a breach of the physical security, cyber security, or as a result of employee theft" of the this place (which is an online wallet)?

I don't think so. If I store my bitcoins in this kind of place (even it is ONE place and not more than ONE) I consider myself very smart.

use paper and pen wallet multibit you can get the sure that the wallet would be hacked if you dont post anywhere the codes

Bitcoin is secure, but it depends how do you use it. Online wallets could be compromised by hackers but normal problems with online wallets are unsecure passwords (or people that uses always the same password, and registered on unsecured web-ponzi). You can secure online wallets with any 2factors system, it will be more secure.
If you have large amounts of Bitcoins its better a cold storage: Trezor, Ledger or a paper wallet.

Split your BTC or altcoin on few wallet.
Both online and offline. Although online wallet more riskable from hacker but it's quite good to put small amount of our money into online than just using 1 offline wallet address.

Transactions will never be able to stay unconfirmed forever. Every transaction goes through eventually, but have in mind that if you pay really low fees or not fees at all, it may take a lot of time. I once did an experiment and sent a 0 fee transaction, only to find out it took 6 days to confirm. It may be longer now. Dont recommend it at all.

For me bitcoin is +oo safer than paypal... They block your account for stupid reason but with online wallet anyone here got his wallet blocked?
Besides there is cold storage way safer..
For confirmation i don't think so, if you have your transaction unconfirmed then it will appear on your wallet after few days.

Since every single BTC users holds copy of BTC blockchain, I really do not see a way to change all these at the same time to fake some transaction.

So I would say, bulletproof safe.

i'm very often using blockchain wallet to store my bitcoin and i think it's pretty safe to use it and i never had a problem from it

you can using offline wallet like bitcoin-core, electrum, etc and you can get full access to your wallet without worrying banned, server down, phising, or etc  :)

but you must caution against trojans like bitcoin stealer, because bitcoin stealer trojan will be able to know your bitcoin information that you have