Bitcoin Forum

I know, I may have been hacked but...

I checked my merits sent and on July 17 it shows 3 different merits given of 50 merits each for threads I have never visited.

Very odd that someone would hack my account just to merit someone.

I have since changed my password but I would have figured a hacker would do some more interesting things with a Legendary account than merit some people.

Or is this a random bug.

I'm not sure how your account got involved in this, but the 3 accounts are connected. They're sending merit to each other and probably should be banned. Oh ok, didn't realize that mods don't deal with this, thanks for clearing that up.

Merit abuse isn't moderated by the forum.

Change your password. Check your email hasn't been changed.

Account farmers value merit. Obviously enough to resort to crime.

This may explain how it was done: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4426885.0

I always type in websites before I log in. Bitcointalk is always up for me. But thinking about it I did have to log in again several days ago.

Could be a virus. Will check that out.

E-mail addresses have been changed on all three too, likely hacked accounts.

Clearly someone is working hard for those merits, it's a shame they don't put that effort into making quality posts.

Just did a scan of my computer so I'm not seeing any virus or anything along those lines. I use antivirus but also do a scan with a secondary program periodically.

I'm curious about who I would talk to about checking the IPs I've logged in as over the past week. Should all be the same country if it was me.

Oh Oh now it is officially spell out "Do whatever with your Merits, you can sell your merits...you can abuse the Merit system...Who cares?". I think that's not the kind of answer we expected from forum staff. This wait and watch game not any good for the forum. So i think now it's time to introduce at least few guidelines regarding Merit distribution. I hope "Theymos" has his plans in mind. Any system has their pros and cons at the early period of time, but system has to be periodically(can decide the time frame accordingly how system reacts) reviewed. Then amendments, revisions and rules to be introduced with the time. Without those 3 activities most likely system will failed which is what we don't want to happen. Because i'm a believer of that the introduction of Merit system is the best thing happened to the bitcointalk forum.  

I think you need to request to Theymos/Cyrus to check IP address. Only administrator  will be able to check the IP addresses.
 
I am not sure but all the accounts involved should prove that they still control the accounts. If some kind of malicious attempt is made by anyone involved that need to be banned.


Even forum do not moderate Merit abuse but hacking of account is much more bigger issue and for that forum definitely should take measures.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.0

It's not my rule, and it's not a secret!

Scams and the trust system are also not moderated by the forum.

You are free to interpret those rules however you wish.

Is it possible you clicked a link through Google? Google loves showing phishing site .TO instead of .ORG.

Do you remember if at the time the merits where assigned you were logged in the forum or online at all doing something else?

phishing site  is fake too and will steal your password.

It is super easy to get caught out.

These are some links that came up via google that I accidentally posted a while back:

https://i.imgur.com/BcS9dhX.png

Fortunately someone picked up the error and notified me so I could change it.

My computer was online and connected but I wasn't posting on bitcointalk. But was likely still logged in at the time. I don't recall if the next morning I had to re-log in.

I don't click on links to go to bitcointalk. I have been using the site for 8 years, I know the address. I just type in the URL.

Checked the accounts "you" sent merit to and they all 3 are connected, sending merit to each other, just see their merit history.
Well, I always have a lot of doubts in everything, so just as an example here :
(I don't accuse anyone in anything without solid proof.)
If you have sold your merit to, let's say, this group of accounts the only way to justify this act is to    
plead innocent and blame the "hackers".
It's one way to get out clean.
I'm more to believe in your story than the example I gave but there is still a possibility of such act.

So OP got his account hacked but they didn't change his password and he recovered it with no problems?  Everything about this sounds fishy.  The accounts that received the merits look very much like they were hacked, but I'm on the fence as to whether they should be tagged or not.  The issue in my head is that they could easily have been sold, and it's not even clear whether OP is the original owner of the Elwar account.  A signed message would be nice.

This looks like it could easily be an alibi for merit sales.  There was another thread claiming much the same thing recently.

I'm not accusing you, just suspicious.  I gave negs to the accounts that received the merits, but not to you.  You have to admit that your story would be one concocted by someone trying to get away with selling merits, though you'd be throwing the buyers under the bus.  It is surprising that the hackers wouldn't change the e-mail on your account like they apparently did on the ones who got the merits.

Selling merit? No. I like my merit. That's why I only give 1 away at a time.

I didn't know it could be sold. Maybe that's as good a reason as any to hodl them.

Easy IP check will show my IP has been the same for the past month.

And I doubt a hacker would continue to answer questions about seasteading for me in various threads. Or be able to capture my oh so classy level of wit. Especially since the accounts that were meritted look like russians.

I've been offered the equivalent of about $1 per post for advertising in my signature. Never went down that path (I advertise Varyon because I support the project and volunteer for the project). I imagine the amount of money paid for merits wouldn't 'merit' even a second thought for me.

Unless they're going for like 1 BTC each then PM me...

Many such cases are being reported here. Is there any other hack or some kind of bug affecting the forum ?

I just want to ask, what will be the actions of Bitcointalk if someone has been proven guilty as a merit abuser?
If it is not moderated by the forum, how will they manage it?

Why you even bother to type the "Bitcointalk" in the search bar? I just simply bookmarked the boards where I normally read and post. Then tick the "show bookmarks bar". I only logging with those bookmarked links and problem solved, no phishing links at all :D

Ya, usually I just go to the address bar and type bitc and it has bitcointalk at the top.

The reality though is I usually have about 20 tabs open at once and bitcointalk is usually one of them. So I rarely need to actually go to the site.

Without going into too many technical details, i was just asking because i thought would be possible just by visiting a link "make you assign merit to somebody" through an exploit, but i verified and is not possible. So i guess somebody took control of your account.

Ummm... seems pretty similar than this case https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4642710

I don`t know, but maybe this is a new way of merit trading, maybe you should red tag those that steal merits from you. They`ve been already tagged by the pharmacist and suchmoon.
I suspect those merits have been sold, we have a new kind of merit-trading-hacking activity around here.

I remembered a poem of "Emily Dickinson" which I learned for literature at school and I made few changes for that (just for fun).

"I'm Merit abuser! Who are you?
Are you - Merit abuser too -?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! They'd ban us - you know!"

Actually they don't :D

Since it was a large amount and a clear-cut case, I deleted those merit sends.

From your first post about Merit:
I'm glad to see you've drawn a line and made an exception!

Now all that's needed is a picture of the Merit thief's face when he sees it's gone again :D

Is this being accepted as a hack or potential bug in the merit system? I assume IP records would indicate whether the account was compromised?

Oh boy... brace yourselves for 500 new threads about merit abuse.

https://cdn5.vectorstock.com/i/1000x1000/89/44/can-of-worms-saying-cartoon-vector-1978944.jpg

His account was compromised.


I'm not going to do reversals on mere abuse.

Fair enough, we're gonna have to use this quote instead of "merit is not moderated".

Thanks for looking into this. I'm just glad that's all the hacker did.

Now I get to spend the day scrubbing my computer for anything suspicious.  

Fortunately I lock my keys up in cold cold storage plus they need to know which numbers I added/deleted.

Oh yeah finally our great "theymos" heard my poem ;) . I think we can take as " I'm going to do reversals on large scale Merit abuses" is it valid for the ANN underworld freaks too? ,who do Merit business more oftenly.

No, you should probably not interpret it as that. This was reversed because theymos was able to verify that the account was compromised.

Okey my mistake. But I think theymos will spell it out sooner than we think ;) isn't that great if it happens?

Ok, I found it in my browser history.

https://bitcointalk. to /index.php?topic=1638278.0

Did a google search to find out how to do animated gifs on bitcointalk.


Damn, sneaky bastards.

Thanks to ibminer for suggesting I check my browser history.

Sorry for causing any trouble for anyone due to my mistake.

Merits all around.


Still scrubbing and locking down my computer anyway...wake up call I suppose.

Add the phishing site to your hosts file, and reroute it to localhost. That prevents this in the future:

Reversals of Merit abuse look fine at the first glance and while I read that I thought first this could be a good idea. But it's obvious that a Merit reversal of abusers will lead to nothing because all the sMerit will be given back to the same cheater and it's possible for him to spent these sMerits again, a never ending story and only more work for admins.

And thanks to OP, now we know that we have to be careful. I'm just wondering the hackers got access but OP didn't enter his login data on this phishing site. Fortunately the hackers didn't change your password.

Elvar, may I ask, if you can add the other accounts which were involved? It's likely there are more accounts connected and if you include them into your entry post this could help for future references and investigations. I can have a look into it, if I find something suspicious.

Thanks  :)

FYI. To verify that I am still in control of my account.

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1ELWAR1qFQbfmpMhcsTaBniFRLewrYqGo2

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July 20, 2018
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