Bitcoin Forum

An unidentified 36-year-old man who owns has lost over $117,000 in Bitcoins while he was logged in on a public wireless network.. An unidentified 36-year-old man who owns a Bitcoin account has lost more than 100,000 euros ($117,000) worth of Bitcoins while he was logged in on a public wireless network in a restaurant in Vienna, Austria.. The Austrian police, however, claimed that they are still investigating whether the victim’s account was already hacked before he opened his account on the unsecured network, CBS reports.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-account-holder-loses-100k-over-public-wireless-network

This is scary. There should be some measurements to stop this problem. People are loosing their hard earned money so easily. Internet is so scary and unsecure need to make it secure to stop hackers

This is one of my fears actually. That's why I refuse to log on to any cryptocurrency related site or app when I'm on a public network. Actually, as a general security measure, you should avoid public networks as much as possible. Better safe than sorry.

I really want to know what exactly happened, did he leak his information online, or was he just being careless? It is indeed a scary thing to hear that such a case can happen, so we all must be extra careful especially when using public and unsecured networks. Best to go offline than broke. I'm more inclined towards the possibility of him being careless in the first place rather than the WiFi being the cause, though.

The article is pure BS.

Read first the article they link to as source:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/when-thieves-strike-cryptocurrency-investors-tremble/

There is nothing about a man losing bitcoins , nothing about a wireless network , nothing about 100k in bitcoins.

It's a pure clickbait article.
I really hate to quote Trump like this but:  "Fake news".

 

This guy just wasn't careful with his founds. I never use public wi-fi with my crypto currencies operations, only my home one. We are surrounded with scammers and hackers who are just waiting when we will make a mistake, well, this guy did. I hope the police will find his money.

Only an utter fool would do such a thing. Public wifi networks are not safe at all, even when it's a store or bar hosting them, but more importantly, everyone can set up a fake wifi network to trap in people and steal information, money, etc. I have never connected any of my portable devices (e.g smartphone, tablet, etc) to wifi outside my own home wifi network. It goes even so far, that when I have family or close people visiting me, I am not allowing them to connect to my home wifi connection. You come to visit me, so what do you want from my wifi, lol. I know I'm paranoid, but this paranoid behavior helps me in keeping potential threats away from me. But then again, as the article points out, it still has to be made clear how exactly he has lost his coins. I hope this article gets updated once it's clear.

another stupid clickbait out of cointelegraph, i am not surprised. they keep doing that, we should really start a campaign for boycotting these fake news sites which spread bullshit and call it "articles". if we don't give them any traffic they will lose  revenue and eventually they will either close down their bullshit machine or start putting some thought into their posts.

it is the same as signature campaigns here! if you don't ban the spammers they will continue shitting all over the forum.

I live in Vienna and heard about this story at work just the day before yesterday. The amount of information I got however was about the same as from that article, ie. close to nil.

Unless concrete information emerges I call bullshit. Maybe his account or laptop was already compromised in the first place, but nowadays you'd have to try really hard to get your Bitcoin stolen just by logging into an exchange on a public Wifi. If anything it would imply that whatever exchange or online wallet he was using, used an insecure SSL configuration, in which case it would be irresponsible to not disclose the affected website. If the website's SSL setup was secure we would be looking at a 0-day SSL exploit, which would be even worse.

LOL I almost fell into the clickbait trap, thank to wrap it up so I dont have to click that fake article, you just saved 1 click  ;D

But yeah, loosing that amount of btc is surely terrifying, especially if hea earned that by depositing his cash. From now on, I will be more careful before connecting my gadget to unknown network

This is the very reason why i don't do transactions while i'm connected to a public network. Its really scary though. I usually only think about this and make precautions but i didn't expect i'd hear that this actually happened to someone

the term "Account Holder" doesn't even have a meaning when you are talking about bitcoin. the article is not helping me understand what that term means either.
from the way they reported it, I agree with others that say it is a useless click-bait and it is not unheard of from this site to post these kind of nonsense.

although they may be referring to someone who had some money on some exchange and his account was hacked on that exchange because he leaked his password to a phishing attack or something similar. I wouldn't really call this a news-worthy incident though!

Whether the story is true or not, only a technologically illiterate person would engage in sensitive work on public networks without some kind of protection. I doubt a person holding $100k worth in bitcoin could make such a basic mistake.

Surfing on a public internet connected wifi to a device that holds tons of money is like carrying a bag full of gold on a public market, drooling thieves waiting for an opportunity to steal the loot.
That's why I'm never going to connect my devices to a public wifi. for my assumption the breach happens in the unsecured public network, always leave the stash on an offline device whether this article is true or not.

I don't know if this news is real but It may be true because hackers nowadays are creating fake wireless connection and go to a crowded place waiting for victims and when someone connects to the fake wireless network, hackers will now gain unauthorized access to your sensitive informations including your private key (if you store it on your device) that is why I don't want to connect to any if these free public wifi because you will never know which one is secured or which is not. People who are unaware of these kinds of hack are always get victimized.

Unfortunately, when this happens to you, using a wireless community is really a danger we should limit and avoid using it.

That is why i never use public wireless networks. I only use my own internet like 3g or at my home. I never use any other wifi connection just because of this problem.

I know and i experimented with this problem on my school once it was so easy to see what was going on in the wireless network.

Thats hell lot of money man, and I can’t believe how careless people could be. Why would they access the bitcoin platform on the public internet as we know that network is always insecure and full of enemies hacking all the way round. I mean bitcoin is most crucial thing and it can not be hacked so easily but it looks like that they has phisihng attack where they logged in to the look a like website of their wallet may be. So that is how they got the network hacked on their IP address (local IP) most probably. But we must learn from these events that we shouldn’t be even putting the wallet address over the public IP address and should never trust any website that we see infront. Its good that you shared this news here as it makes us aware of things which are actually scary.

I know is it very pathetic to bare this kind of lost. I every business there are rules guiding it to successful. It is always advisable not to open our wallet with public computer.

They have more than $100,000 but they don't have a pocket wifi or data connection in their phones? The security of your Bitcoins should one of your priority. Avoid connecting to public wireless network and I think having that amount of Bitcoin, you should store it on a safer storage such as offline or hard wallet. They lost a big amount of Bitcoin but I think they are also at fault there for not securing it.

This is the safest course of action, not just for crypto, but for your entire life (emails, social media, banking, etc). Public WiFis are unsecure and it is notoriously easy to compromise any data being sent through one. Using your phone's mobile data to set up a private wifi hotspot is safer if you absolutely must, but I only trade crypto on my home WiFi - no deal, no price, no dip is worth the risk of losing that much money.

Also, if this story is true, why did he spend €100,000 on bitcoin but didn't spend €100 on a hardware wallet?

No matter how he would tell those authorities regarding on his lost bitcoins it cant be reverted or take it back.This is the risk when you carelessly logged in on Public wireless network on which this is really prone to hacks since anyone can possible deep in and can survielance on the possible informations that being inputted while you are logged in into the network.Hackers can anytime go into your account once they do have the credentials or the informations needed on such access. This is why we should be always aware.