Bitcoin Forum

As we know, Hal's account has been likely compromised, since someone logged in today:


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2436

As far as I know, satoshi's account is permanently locked. I think Hal's should be locked permanently too.

He was satoshi's first bitcoin friend. Imagine if satoshi shared with Hal via PM something that could compromise satoshi or somehow give access to some of the early coins.

A bad actor could use this on their benefit. For example, Craig Wright, to come back with more "look im satoshi" tricks.

Deceased famous people like Hal should have their accounts locked, I would like to know what mods think of this.

I think, it should not be outright blocked. It might be his family.

If there is some secret in PM and it is Craig Wright, who has broken into it, then he has already looked into it.

But, it is good if the current operator clearly says who he/she is.

The admin has to lock his account to prevent someone from using it and can be released only by the request of his family members and when i checked it says that his account has recently changed password and i am sure it is a breach unless it is said otherwise by the admin.

Hal said his family members were tech savvy, and that he left some Bitcoins for them in bank vaults. Any of them could probably prove they are related to Hal by signing a message from an old Bitcoin address known to belong to Hal. His account should be locked until a family member contacts theymos or a staff member.

I did notice it very hard to log into the forums about 3 hours ago.
Maybe that is when the hacking attempt happened and Hal's account got found out. :-[

I think he and or his wife stated that they had cashed out all the bitcoins to pay for his health care.

It was probably an admin here or someone who bought everyone's hacked passwords off the darknet.

Unlikely. An admin could simply access anything they wanted by looking at the forum's unencrypted DB. The password was reset via email, so it was probably not the hacked password that was used, although email addresses were leaked, so it is possible that someone hacked his email address and used that to reset Hal's password.

IMO, it is more likely that one of his heirs had reset his password, and I do not see any reason why his heirs should not have access to his account/information available when accessing his account.

I read he cashed out most of his Bitcoins to pay for his health care, but saved some early mined coins for his heirs. The quotes below are from one of his last posts here, and he said he stored some Bitcoins in a safety deposit box for his family.

+1, maybe he had sensitive info in his PMs or the account may use the reputation he had
I'm not a fan of messing with someone else's data but here I see a risk

I think it should be bloked imediately, if they don't we are under attack by a potential Hal/Hal family impersonator. Block the account and then if it's really someone from Hal family that has the password, they can easily contact theymos in reddit or something and prove it, until then the safe thing to do is to block it imo.

I hope Hal cleaned his PM story.

The problem is that we know it's not the case, the password has been changed today!
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1787466.new;topicseen#new

I think it's a hacker for sure. The passwords were sold, probably on the deep web or something. Hackers make a lot of base by selling databases of hacked forums in big and pricey bulks, since some of the accounts may be from vip members, in this case Hal's. So yeah, most likely it's a hacker and blocking the account as soon as possible is the correct thing, but if he had valuable PM's.. the damage is done.