Bitcoin Forum

Hello fellow bitcoiners I have recently had my account at an exchange compromised and am out to the tune of tens of thousands. Harsh day to be sure. I realize there is little hope of ever seeing that money again but I would like to investigate this as far as I can. I have the bitcoin address the funds have moved to as well as several IP addresses that were used to carry out the attack. If anyone thinks they can help please message me.

I have changed relevant account information and contacted the exchange. Any suggestions of next steps would be appreciated.

Unfortunately, there's little to nothing you can do. You can see where the funds end up, but you can't really know who the hacker is unless the hacker sends it to an exchange, and the exchange is willing to help you seize the funds, which might be very unlikely especially if it isn't a good number of bitcoins.

I think the only thing you can do right now is to learn from your mistakes, and make it completely sure that it won't happen again in the future. You shouldn't be leaving your funds on exchanges in the first place(unless you're actively trading). Hopefully you didn't lose a life-changing amount.

This was essentially my alt coin portfolio. Was too lazy to make cold storage for all the separate coins. Paid for that laziness dearly. Value was in the 5 figure range. Not a life changing amount I would say, but given another bull run it could have been... I thought I was soo smart DCA'ing into everything as it crashed..... I am very patient and was well positioned for the next run I believe :(

Would you tell/share us more about what really happen?

What exchange you are using? What security measure you are using? such 2fa enabled, sms auth and etc. Do you get any login information on this hacker when he/she logged to your account?

So far and unfortunately, no one can help you here with this issue.

Sorry about that but everyone above is correct. No one can help you here but the exchange that you use. Contact them by any means and tell the story about the hacking incident. But if its your negligence, I doubt it that they will even compensate your loss.

But if they found the fault on their end, they might give you a refund. As you mentioned above several IP addresses, the close question your exchange might ask you is if you ever logged in into public wifi's or filled up some unusual form/sheets.

I believe that you can't do anything with that problem. The best thing to do right now is to contact the exchange you traded. I think that you can recover your account using their support. But, not your funds especially when the hacker moved your funds into their wallet.

Well, I would say that here we are talking about split responsibility. The user is responsible for protection of the account by keeping safe your credentials and to protect your computer or mobile phone from malware. But exchanger is responsible for security of the whole platforme. Hacker will not return your money but if you can prove that hacker didn't get the access to your account because of your security mistakes then exchange should make the refund and recover account. You can try, it's just a little bit of extra effort.

Did not have 2FA, Fucked up :(. Attacker gained access to email and reset my exchange password. Pretty sure that makes me screwed.

The chance to get a refund from an exchange account which is hacked is close to Zero imho. At least an exchange has their own terms about such issue, so it should be checked first about the term of the exchange.
To be honest, for me the story is not really clear on how the hack happened. I think OP should give us more details. In which exchange, how he noticed it, how about his account security (2fa or not) and other important things.


Sorry for your lost but it is a lesson learned although a bit expensive lesson. This is why there is always recommendation for crypto lovers/traders to not storing assets in exchanges. Even if you have to do it then you have to make sure the best security for your account.

I'm sorry to hear about your loss. You see, addresses doesn't have a name attached to it so it's unlikely that you can recover your funds as transactions are irreversible. As others have pointed out, this is a hard and expensive lessons to learn.


Try to scan your machine of any malware, enable 2FA if possible in your accounts in the future. Don't put all your money in an exchange, just like what happen to you or in cases a exchange get's hack your funds will be all gone as well.

I am sorry for your lost. Can you please share the name of the exchange where you got hacked? Because from what I know, most exchanges now requires 2FA before you can withdraw plus some codes sent to your email or phone number. If you just got hacked today, try to remember what you have done on your device, how you got compromised, perhaps installing a new software which you have not been evaluated?

You can also post the IP address here so some people can try helping you. Nobody wants to help if we have to approach you and ask you what really happened. Be informative on set so you get more attention from people willing to help.

The exchange was Kraken, which is in the process of requiring 2fa but not there yet. I got pwned just in time. I noticed about an hour after the attack that my funds were gone. there were notification emails sent by the exchange but for some reason the push notifications for my email have not been working and I did not notice them... The attacker attempted to delete the emails from the exchange but they are in my 'deleted folder'

I am wary of posting details such as the bitcoin address and IP address in case I tip off the guy that I'm following this and what I know... What do you guys think in this case?

Lesson learned. Unfortunately, some people really need to learn the hard way, and today was your time to do so. Don't be so careless and lazy next time, especially when talking about significant amounts of money.

Regardless if an exchange has 2fa or not, leaving funds on an exchange is still a very irresponsible thing to do.

This won't do that much unfortunately. Hacker might have been using a proxy/vpn in the first place.

Yes I have cold storage as well, thankfully. I WAS using these funds to trade with.

Since it likely doesn't matter anyway here is the bitcoin address the funds were moved to.

32cDFtEeUsCX9eYPWh56PoX26L47ySz8SH

Looks like the funds are on the move. Along with what is likely other ill begotten gains.

The IP addresses that were used are:
100.43.112.216 - which appears to be in south korea
104.158.11.46 - which appears to be in ontario, canada.

If the attacker is reading this:

Well played sir. I respect your skills even if I despise your ethics. I hope the money you earn is worth the corruption of your character.

Oh. So you have a cold storage wallet then.

So the funds you lost are only your trading funds? Hopefully not that much of a percentage over your total crypto holdings. I guess what you need to learn is how to secure your exchange accounts then.

1. Use a secure password. Preferably, 40 characters with symbols and everything (e.g. zbo^nxvVQNRVSRME4vB38mkaiG5GIYJt&z7mzUFn). To make your passwords easier to organize, use a password manager such as KeePass2[1].
2. 2 Factor Authentication. NOW.
3. As much as possible, have a separate email account for your exchanges.

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[1] https://keepass.info/download.html

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You're going to waste your time tracking your funds mate. Forget it. I know it's hard, but the best thing you can really do is to move on and learn from it. Don't make this loss slow you down from accumulating.

The absolute first thing you need to do is go file a police report.
The chance that you will see your coins back is low, but if they ever do manage to find a criminal network that's tied to the theft of your coins, you might be able to see some of them back.

I mean, part of Bitfinex stolen coins also were recovered.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitfinexs-stolen-funds-partially-recovered-and-returned-by-us-law-enforcement

Can you say specifically the amount money that has been hacked? You will know it with through/track with IP address but you forget with some coin out there who has high privacy such as monero or bitcoin mixing that make you confused to track it. I haven't saw any person who has experienced conceded in his wallet and try to track the transaction till got his money back. Most of them just willing the money gine and fix any mistakes he made.

Once hacked then this is the hardest part on how you would track or retrieve those funds back to you.We know that crypto transactions are irreversible and even
the exchange on where your account is compromised cant even help to get those coins back to you.This is why next time we do set 2fa or tight security on our exchange accounts specially
it do have ten of thousands of funds on it.

You probably won't get your money back, though you still should try, but what you can do is make a detailed report about what lead to your misfortune so others can learn from your mistake. Do you have any idea how exactly hacker stole your funds? Was your password weak, did they reset the password by taking over your email, did you reuse your password on other sites, do you have any malware on your machine, did you click on a phishing version of the site?

Contacting exchange is one of the right choices when requesting support from the legal management team. Also, I believe that the exchange will support you if this is the cause of the exchange. But I recommend using public exchange platforms and in particular, should turn on all security modes that the trade provides.

As a junior member, even early one, how come your account was hacked? What for? And if your account be hacked it should not border you much because I know you can't have much in that account. I advice you open another account and continue your life. Just be more  careful with the new account.

I think only one thing you can do is contact to exchange
There  are cyber crime forces in Europe i guess in any other country there are some agencies what you can contact to
But maybe better for you to move your thread to Bitcoin Technical Support
There are experienced members there

I'm really sorry for your loss,  mate, but still I don't understand how can people to learn nothing from all happened with exchanges.

The safest way to keep your funds safe is a hardware wallet. Exchanges are just for trading,  not to hold funds for longterm.

This is very annoyed and sad things happen to OP, hackers nowadays were very smart. If I have a fund in exchange I would rather to a doubled security level system. Putting 2FA authentication and Gmail verifications and other seed phrases before you can withdraw or transfer fund. That's the reason why I did not trust exchange in storing my asset because I believed that once you are not holding your private key then the bitcoin you've stored does not belong to you.

To avoid attacks by many hackers, anticipation for all accounts on the exchange is activated by 2fa and google authenticator. During this time I only use this method. And I think it's still safe.

If you actually read OP's main post you will immediately know that OP wasn't referring to his Bitcointalk account, but his exchange account. Maybe actually read the whole post first next time.

Exchanges rarely refund your losses if the hack happens because of your carelessness.  I'm sorry but your money is gone and you need to take this as a learning experience for future security.

No one can help you with this all you should have to check before that what are you going to do

Unfortunately, you can only be patient and learn from this error, because right now I have not seen a solution when '' conditions '' like this. In the future you must protect your account with 2FA etc.

It's useless to investigate, you're in a decentralized zone. Where all transactions will be difficult to trace even though it's an FBI. So I just hope you see the money back, hopefully

Since you have contacted the exchange and they could not help you in your quest to recover your stolen found from the hacked account on they exchange, there is nothing any other person can do except if the is a new development on how to track hacked account on exchange in recent time. Lots of people have lost huge sum of money on exchange attack in the past and nothing has been done about that.

What you are doing is right. You have to change your personal information. And I think the next thing that you need to do is apply the your own privacy. You need to take care your personal information such as password or private keys even in your close friend and family. Keep it in your self and avoid other sites that ask for your information.

If you're on a centralised exchange (especially if it required KYC) they may have some sort of insurance policy. I remember that was a push for a while from a lot of larger exchanges to deal with the security concern aspect of trading large sums of coins.

It also depends on what you mean by hacked. If someone got your password and you didn't have 2FA then you're probably out of luck even if the exchange would normally be willing to reimburse. I'm really sorry to hear a story like this no one wants to lose any amount of money for any reason.

In terms of tips for next time, I only trade on the one personal computer that doesn't leave my home - I never use someone elses wifi, trade on someone elses computer, go to any weird sites that might infect my computer etc. So far no issues but I think little things like that can make a big difference in reducing your risk.

Just consider that as a tuition fee to learn from your past, dont stop believing on bitcoin you can start a new one and for sure you already learned what you need to learn and now you will take more care on every of your account and transactions.

Unfortunately there is nothing that anyone can do for you on the outside as far as I know. This is why it’s always  echoed to be careful of the kind of exchange you use and also not to leave your funds on any exchange except you are always trading. This could be a compromise from the inside just to steal funds and nothing will be done to it. Please be careful next time.

What exchange was it exactly? Security is a primary concern of many exchanges, so interested in exactly where the issue is, and if it was potentially partially an issue from the exchange side.

Do you think someone found out your password or was it an actual 'hack'? I know the term 'hack' is often used in a fairly broad way, but an actual hack is different to someone figuring out your credentials/password and going from there. Hope you are able to recover some of your funds OP.

Ouch. This is what people need to learn from this unfortunate hack - take the time to set up 2FA! This is especially true if you have a significant amount of money on an exchange. Better yet, get a hardware wallet!

The question is, how did they got access to your email? Weak password? weak recovery words? Was your OS compromised with some malware that siphoned out your password to attackers?

I know someone who lost 6 figures with an even worse mistake, and there have been posts in this forum of people losing 7 figures, so yeah it could have been worse. At least you were smart enough to keep cold wallets unlike the aforementioned examples...

So sad that happen to you, if the altcoins or bitcoins already moved the wallet hackers you will not get again your coins.
But if the exchanges wallet the coins is still there is possible.  But I don't there's a chance for you to get again your money.
Next time make sure that every single information make sure it safe and just add 2fa or other that can help to secure your account in exchanges site because that is prone to hacker.

1. password is safe or shared?
2. private keys are the most important thing to have and you hsould never share it!
3. is it hacked or made a damage on your side?
4. it will never be back though it can be detected through transfer made, i hope you BTC went to a KYC wallets.

I know its a painful thing to bear but then you just have to take your mind off it. There is absolutely nothing you can do about the current situation but to move ahead. I also had same issue last year when someone logged into my account and moved away with my money. Its a good thing you have put extra security. Sorry about your loss, we just have to be more careful next time with out online money.

I would not start using such sites as a suggestion for you without having a more secure functionality at its backend such as a 2fa.
Or a simple SMS verification system would be wiser.
Unfortunately it's all about you getting some feedback from their support. Nothing we can do about it.

This hacking is really a serious issue. These days people dont want to work, just wake up and steal funds. This is why i like using sites with very tough security like 2fa. Anyway sorry about your funds, you surely make more.

There's nothing you can do with the bitcoin that was stolen from you. You should've given more details regarding what happened and mentioned what exchange have you lost your  bitcoin, so that people will be aware of it. Take care of your credentials next time and move on.

if you actually read the whole thread, you would know that he did mention a few details
- the exchange is kraken, and
- the hacker managed to login and steal his fund in the exchange
by first gaining access to email and reset the password on his exchange account

The hacker is probably using a virtual private network to mask his location. I don't know how does he gain access to your e-mail address and hacked your account but the best thing you can do right now is to be vigilant because there are a lot of malware and phishing sites that are sprouting everywhere and its main target are Crypto Currency users like us.

Sorry to learn about your lost funds.The biggest mistake here was that you had not enabled 2FA authentication to your mail id, by gaining access to your mail id ,your other accounts may also be on stake. If your mail password is still working just change it immediately and set 2 FA to all your mail ids (including backup mail id). I can understand of having 1 tier security to your account if little funds were kept there but this amount was in 5 figures then 2 tier security should be there.

I got caught the same way brother, except they used a phishing link it was a page clone like a google webpage login, no 2fa,  then they stole my coins from exchanges then pretended to be me to my dad and stole my dads coins. Just be aware that life is a blockchain and when they die, everyone on the network will see their actions.

They not only cost me and my dad all of our btc we have been saving, they pitted my own father against me, he thought it was me for the longest time.

I despise their skills and ethics, if the had skills they would of told the person they were vulnerable and helped them out.

skill
/skil/
noun

    the ability to do something well; expertise.

well
/wel/
adverb
adverb: well; comparative adverb: better; superlative adverb: best

    1.
    in a good or satisfactory way.