Bitcoin Forum

It's my first message and I'm crying...

I had about 3.5 bitcoin, I tried to use some a short while ago and got a message that there is a compulsory upgrade.

I downloaded and installed the upgrade on my iMac, restarted Electrum, and then it happened...

It immediately said there was not enough funds to transfer the amount of ALL my coins but continued trying to process it until it eventually said there is a zero balance.

BOOM! EVERYTHING IS GONE!!

:-(

Unfortunately you have fallen victim to a phishing attack and have been tricked in to downloading a fake copy of Electrum. You can read more about this phishing attack here: https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/issues/4968

You should only ever download Electrum from the official site (https://electrum.org/#download), and you should always verify the signature before installing and opening your wallets. See the guides on how to do this at the end of this post.

Sorry for your loss OP. You could file a police report or similar, but this scam has been going on for some time and as far as I am aware no one has ever managed to recover their stolen coins. You obviously need to delete all traces of the fake Electrum from your system and install the real copy by following the steps above.

---

https://bitcoinelectrum.com/how-to-verify-your-electrum-download/
https://bitzuma.com/posts/how-to-verify-an-electrum-download-on-mac/

You are using Electrum.
Try seeking help here.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=98.0

Oh  o_e_l_e_o above already answered your question.
Sorry for your loss.
Damn! The post from github is December 2018 and it is still happening.

so sorry for your loss but if you could trace the details of the transaction, perharps, you can flag and report it so people can be on the lookout for transactions coming from the receipient address.  Phishing attacks have been around for sometime and I have personally been a victim of phishing attack on two occasions and it has made me wiser, though, my funds never got retireved but then it has further advised me on how to safeguard my only wallet.

It is useless to seek help. Nobody can help him.

Those coins were already transferred to another address. Bitcoin transactions are irreversible.


There is one thing you can do: Get informed.

You had 3.5 bitcoins. For about 0.006 btc you can buy a ledger nano (https://shop.ledger.com/ buy only in this website).
The price of the proper security equipment for your investment is about 0.17% of what you invested.

A hardware wallet is, without a doubt, the best and most secure way to store your bitcoins. I strongly recommend one.

Damn, that's a hard lesson to learn man. Just don't get discouraged, if you believe in BTC it'll all eventually worth it!

He downloaded a fake electrum app, electrum had a warning on their website above to be careful downloading into other sources.

Sorry about what happened to you OP but there is no way to get back those bitcoins. 3.5BTC is a big amount and I know what you are feeling right now. Did you just searched through google the word electrum and didn't go directly to the official Electrum website?

Most cases did like that and downloaded the wrong electrum.

Okay I will assume op is telling the truth.

Lesson number 1) do not have all your coins in 1 wallet

3.5 BTC is a huge amount. sorry for the loss.

damn its just a very unforgiving world. you lost it all and you don't have anyone to turn to but the forum. this is why i don't trust any emails i got and would rather research first who else got some message same as what i got. you'd have to be very vigilant when it comes to crypto that even the emails from the exchanges you signedup might not really be from them at all.

Sad to see that another mate has fallen to the hands of phishing attacks. This is so common that it makes me want to cry too. From now on, never act on upgrades especially when it comes from softwares you downloaded of the internet. The electrum wallet like any other wallets should always be downloaded from their official sites, if in doubt better ask first before it is too late - unfortunately, like in your case :(

This is not the case here.
According to what stated by OP, he/she got a message regarding updating Electrum and fell for the scam.
Old versions of Electrum let the servers to display a message when users broadcast a transaction. This feature can be easily abused. Servers can ask the users to install a fake version of Electrum instead of a real update.

A link to more details about this phishing attack posted above by o_e_l_e_o.

People should really mind even on the most basic things to avoid these kind of situation or circumstances.I didnt really expect that there are still people who got victimized
on this classic phishing attempt via Electrum updates yet this had been known already in the past. Damn, 3.5 bitcoin isnt something an amount that can easily be ignored.
@OP, sorry for your loss but no one could able to help you out since tx's are irreversible and theres nothing we can do about.

If holding anything more than 0.01btc which is around $100 by todays price. You should be using a hardware wallet since they cost less than this to purchase one and hold more than what this device costs you is worth the piece of mind to not rely on software related ones or webwallets which is as worse as holding them on an exchange.
Only use them if you are planning to transfer any sort of cryptocurrency between access points but hold any large amount over $100 worth of crypto on a hardware wallet.
Preferably one that is air gapped. Meaning not connected to the internet 24/7.

This is really unfortunate. I don’t know exactly how it happened. Did you download the Electrium Wallet from the official website? How have hackers managed to hack into the wallet and demand mandatory update?
It is also bad to keep all the money in one wallet only.

If your funds were stolen, then you should be able to share the transaction ID for the tx which saw your Bitcoin moved.

If not, then it could be possible that the latest version of the wallet simply updated to SegWit and lost legacy support, or that you just created a new seed.

Please post the transaction ID for the transfer here and we'll see if we can help, if you can't provide this because there isn't one, then your funds are likely still safe.

Most likely he fell for a fake Electrum. Remember that a few days ago, Electrum just upgraded and release a new version 4.0.1. So we don't know where he the OP gets the message, maybe in an email because base on my experienced, there are no message in ver 3.3.8 that you need to upgrade to 4.0.1. But if you know that they have a new release, you have to manually update the version by yourself, download the latest and then verify. And this is where the OP might have fallen, he got a message not from the official Electrum, but from a cyber criminal.

If you go to the real site of Electrum you can see the warning their that you should not fall into a fake Electrum account and never download anything aside from the real site. I’m sorry buddy but you’re a victim of the scammers and the you download the wrong file which corrupted your private details. Electrum is a good wallet but there’s a lot of phishing site for Electrum, this is a very unfortunate to you buddy.

What a tricking message just to fool someone new to the market. This will happen over and over again tends to lost potential investors away from crypto because of these phishing sites and scamming activities.

BTW, It is really sorry to have this bad experience, you can't bring it back to you as it was totally gone. However, it is probably not the end of your crypto journey, I understand it is really a big loss but I believe also that you can still have that amount of you never quite. But of course, you should use reliable sites and be careful in using a wallet, much better to use a hard wallet to give additional safety and the most important it, you don't need to reply someone/strangers that sends a message to you in regards to wallet upgrade or anytime coz it redirects you in the fake site.

First, so sorry to hear that, and hopefully, you are really tough to face this incident.
Second, you own big amount of BTC, 3,5BTC, and you don't know about storing it on the hardware? Sorry, not to blame you, but this is am kind of very important lesson.
Whether this story is really real or not, but this can be a lesson for all related to the safety of storing BTC. Before having BTC, basics like this should be understood, related to volatility and security of how to store BTC safely. In addition, the most basic thing is about the new information that we must check again and again, as faced by the OP, namely the number of phishing that causes loss of assets.

yeah there is nothing to be able to be done to recover the funds because it has been lost exactly. This is not the first, not the first case and this happens very often. theft and fraud in the crypto world also very often occur with models that are often almost similar. Should this always be a lesson for everyone? Care must be taken in this matter, no matter how assets.

^ No, do not click the popup message on the electrum wallet that said you need to upgrade your wallet to another version. By the way, what electrum wallet version you use? Because the latest update is 4.0.2 https://electrum.org/#download. You can directly check to the official website of the electrum.
Nevertheless, there is no way to return your bitcoin loss and sorry about that. Next time, be sure that you will learn from this mistake. Be vigilant of all times and don't be neglect.

Looks like they were right, you have downloaded fake apps and that upgrade make it all happen. Unfortunately, we can't get back your bitcoin. You probably downloaded if not phishing sites, fake apps then maybe there is a malware inside of it that can hacked your bitcoins. I hope you can be better soon and be careful in downloading apps. There are easy ways to check it the apps or the url we are typing is legit or not. You should be careful next time.

Sorry for your losses mate but this happens if you are lack of knowledge how Crypto wallets works.

You should have contacted the support please before doing this Hackers advice of upgrading.

---

Hope you will not lose interest in Crypto and will continue to invest in crypto,and use this as a learning experience mate.

3.5 bitcoin is huge amount of money and best chance of probability that you are phished out on some phishing sites you have gone into and stole your funds right away. Sad to say there are still people are prone to that attack without leaving a trace and don't have the chance to get back of what are stolen. It's hard to accept but it is what it is and experienced will always be a great teacher and this will make you a more cautious person in the world of cryptocurrency.

Yeah,right.If I was at OPs place and I got scammed losing 3.5BTC I would never look at Bitcoin again(even though it's not Bitcoin's fault). :(
I don't know whether or not the OP is a Bitcoin noob or not.Having 3.5BTC and putting them in one wallet(even though it's Electrum) is a rookie mistake.
I really hope that he will recover from this loss and make enough money to give Bitcoin a second chance and invest his savings wisely next time.

Unfortunately you lost your bitcoin with a hack that has been around for more than one year and a half, I'm really sorry that you have lost so much bitcoin because I know how difficult it can be to obtain it, it seems to me that you left your bitcoin in your wallet for a very long time without updating your software wallet and as such you were not aware of the risks that you were victim of.

It is very possible to secure your coins properly with a software wallet, but you need to be honest with yourself about your capabilities and if you cannot do that then it is better for you to get a hardware wallet, I know it seems too late but if you are still planning to buy more bitcoin or if you have more bitcoin in other wallets then get a hardware wallet as soon as you can.

Hmm I'm wondering if it is really stolen then there should be some history to his wallet and he could share it with us right? or what happened is that he also lost his wallet?

What I think is if the electrum had an update, then he must have been notified so it'll appear on his screen, most probably it is covered by a new wallet and he could just see it when he seek from the support.

Indeed, you can't say that it is stolen coz u can't find it. You won't just click anything on the internet knowing you got a decent amount of bitcoin in your wallet right?
3.5BTC imagine the smile of the hackers when they stole 3.5BTC, they could've been celebrating by now then.  ???

3.5 BTC is pretty big and how lucky that scammers to get it. Scammers will use different tricks just to catch their prey and the sad thing is that you are one of those prey. It is really sad and we felt it and this is one of the disadvantages of crypto, you can't recover it anymore. Even though a lot of similar things happening around but then, many were still investing Bitcoin and ain't give them a big reason to quite. They are learning their past bad experience and that quitting is not a way to get it back.

How sad, another scam victim using Bitcoin. I don't know if this is probably the result of naive people using Bitcoin without enough technical knowledge on how to use it. Sad to say that probably 25% belongs to this kind of people that we called prey from scammers. If they are educated very well they won't fall into this kind of scammers trap.

Always verify the legitimacy before you will download or update your wallet into the next version, or might pretty good if you actually use the official wallet website not the popup message.

This is so sad on different level, the scam has been going on since 2018 and people keep falling for it. I can only imagine what you are going through currently but you just have to keep the hope alive buddy!  And when next you get back at your feet standing tall, try to get a more secure hardware wallet to save your assets. It sad losing asset as big as this but i believe this will be a lesson for you and everyone, with time the industry will get rid of these scammers

Yes, moreover we are in a very difficult situation, a global pandemic. We all need funds to survive in the midst of a declining economy, plus the loss of large assets, it's very sad.

I'm sorry, that is a very large nominal. You have to pay a lot to get a lesson that the security of your wallet is everything, and the fake application is real, I can't say anything else, losing 0.03 BTC makes me sad all day, let alone 3.5 BTC. Hopefully, you can reflect on this incident, do not regret, all of this must have a silver lining, next time use a hardware wallet to store assets in large amounts.

in my opinion the loss that you experience it needs to be understood, if you can track transaction details, perps, you try to report it so people can look for transactions that come from the recipient's address. Phishing attacks have been around for some time and I personally have been a victim but made me wiser in overcoming things though, I am newbe I have never retired but then have advised me more about how to protect my only wallet.
better try first.

This is a scary experience in my opinion, because you are not careful that you end up becoming a phishing victim. I can not help much
with events that you experience, and which is annoying if we are exposed to phishing. It is impossible for our lost Bitcoin to return.
3.5 BTC is very much, for now all you can do must move on. Learn from your mistakes, so later will not be repeated. I pray for you, so
that you can quickly get the change for your lost.

The thought of losing just a few satoshi from this scammers and unimaginable, what more for 3.5 BTC. I hate to say this, but to really learn our lessons here, most of time we need to be a victim before we realised what we really need to do on how to protect our assets. This scammers are not going to stop here, they will continue until they victimised again. Electrum is one of the best wallet out there, if you really know how to used them.

Could you please tell us where this message was sent and where it came from?

Sometimes it is not the downloading of the app which is problematic itself. One may download the legit app but still fails to protect his/her BTC due to messages such as the one you received giving fake instructions on the updates.


25% is too low in my opinion. I guess more than 70% of BTC owners have made a misstep or two along the way that could have totally wiped out everything they own. It so happened that scammers are eyeing the significant amounts.

When I finally got into Bitcoin myself several years ago, I was quite enamored by the revolutionary philosophy behind it and I was too excited to own a little amount just to share with the feeling of being part of the entire saga. But that was before I got educated by the technical aspects of its security. I think this is also happening to many other newcomers probably including the OP.

Truly this is a very sad thing. But lost bitcoin can never be recovered So you have to know and learn well first. Try learning by observing the best sites for bitcoin control They are as safe as keeping physically precious metals. Just like keeping a bag of gold coins a person who is careful can have their personal cash safe by being stolen by hackers The wallet is very reliable in Electram but 2fa code is much less likely to be hacked.

Sorry for your loss. This is why I always verify signatures whenever I upgrade to a new wallet version.

OMG, damn! 3.5 bitcoins? That’s a really big amount that you lost there. I don’t have that much, and if I do and I end up losing it, I will cry meehn. I hope you find a means in future to make more than that. I usually recommend that newbies make use of wallets that they can easily understand.

All these decentralized wallets like Ethereum, Exodus, and the rest of them are quite complicated with their process and that’s why I wouldn’t recommend it to a newbie who knows nothing. If you’re using a simple wallet like Coinbase on your mobile phone you wouldn’t have had this problem, since every upgrade will be on app store. Sorry for your loss man.

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for all your replies and kind words. Yes, it was a huge loss, and I haven't felt like coming back here (or much else) since then.

For all those comments about learning lessons. Yep, hindsight is a great teacher and I take responsibility for my own mistakes. It's certainly becoming more and more necessary to keep our eye on the ball without even blinking. Goodness, I'm getting sore eyes already! LOL

The reason that I had the BTC is that I had an investment a couple of years ago that only paid dividends in BTC, so I had to get a wallet to receive them, and Electrum seemed like the best option at the time. The value of the coins was low at the time, so I just let them sit in the hopes they would increase.

Now that I had a need, I planned to withdraw them (to help build small businesses in poor communities in India and Africa).

I started to do a test withdrawal of a small amount when I got the popup message within Electrum that a mandatory security upgrade was required before proceeding with the transfer. This didn't surprise me, because I hadn't used it for a couple of years and still had 3.2.3.

It didn't have a link, but a masked url to copy. As soon as I downloaded and installed the "upgrade", it did the transfer of everything in my wallet..... and there was frustratingly no STOP button to press while it was in process.

I must admit, the unrecoverable nature of crypto has not made the thought of trying it again very palatable, but praise God, I'm sure it will work out in the end.

BTW, there were some who made comments about posting the transaction details. Is there really a possible outcome with that?

Thanks again everyone.
Rex717

Actually posting the transaction details is not help you recover your bitcoin, they just want to check if your loss is real or it is your fantasy story.
Anyway, I think now you feel better , let's believe that nothing is lost forever, it will come back to you in another form :D.

Electrum wallet are very vulnerable and a lot of bitcoin wallet has been lost and reported even here on bitcointalk. It is very important that when you want to use the wallet, always download from official website and do not try to use any link from other source. You didn't provide details about where you download the original electrum wallet from, that could be where the problem come from. I will suggest you drop full details of your wallet address and transaction to further analysis

Yeah, if it is really stolen from your wallet there should be some transaction made to get your funds out and be sent to another wallet, this should be in a transaction history, if not then, it is not really stolen.
I does not mean to recover your loss but it might help us to know what really happened and give you more accurate things to do. If you don't mind sharing it with us, can you?

Ahh 3.5BTC i won't feel any better until recovering that amount, that was huge actually, around $33,000 I could get a small refurbished house with that. Anyways, you need nothing but time to move on.

Upgrade should have gone on a massive advertising spree to alert their users to this.

I can't believe years later it's still happening, and I'm sure it will for years to come.

Fucking hell.

There are definitely transaction details of the loss and the balance is now zero. The history also shows the negative transaction. I took a screenshot to show you, but I can't see a way of posting it here without a link to a website (which I don't have).

Actually, I'm retired and my wife has severe dementia and aphasia, and I'm sitting in front of my computer with noise reducing headphones trying to concentrate past her extremely loud happy noises, so please forgive me for not being up with all the tricks of how to do things here. I do banking and the like when she goes outside, but those moments are brief and I don't get time to keep up with everything. (I couldn't even figure out how to quote a specific paragraph from a previous post.)

Cheers,
Rex717

So sad that there are techie thief now. The thief now has become more knowledgeable and intelligent in stealing money. I had thought tha thief would only do it taking money by force like in the malls or in the streets aiming a gun in their victims.

The worst thing is that 3.5 BTC was stolen and in our place that money is already huge. It can even buy a house and lot or a nice good car. Anyway hope that you can get a help and trace the theif since it could do because bitcoin has blockchain. But, there is a little bit problem with it because theif could convert btc to other blockchain platform like the altcoins.

Unfortunately, It seems like you were a victim of a phishing attack by downloading fake and unofficial version of Electrum wallet. In order to securely I would recommend you to search the forum and and find the thread about how to securely verify .asc PGP key in blockchain verify the Electrum wallet before you even try to download it. Otherwise, this wallet maybe work perfectly for you and seems like official version. The only difference is the unofficial version will send your seed phrases and private keys to the hacker for the future abuse.

This was way more complex than the average phishing attack, the hacker took advantage of a weakness on the electrum wallet to broadcast a message to anyone that connected themselves to a malicious server deployed by the hacker, if the victims downloaded the new wallet from the link the hacker gave and installed that wallet they will lose their coins, otherwise nothing will happen.

This is really sad for the OP but if anything we need to learn several lessons from this:

Only download sensitive software like wallets from the source.
Verify the download.
Only install a wallet on a safe computer.
If storing large quantities of money get a hardware wallet.
Keep your OS and your wallets up to date.

For anyone interested this is a link to the news.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/phishing-attack-on-electrum-wallet-nets-hacker-almost-1-million-in-hours-report

you can simply upload the screenshot on Imgur and share the link of the image here in the thread you made. high ranking members can quote your post so the screen shot will be visible without clicking the link to the website.

This has been the problem with upgrade pumping up from your computer system and just clicking on these pops could lead anyone to a dirty place like OP. Am very careful about my computer upgrad because many had lost their stash through this process. Advuse- always visit the original or official websites for the upgrade than to click phishing links.

My friend has also experienced the same thing, since there has been a link that has shared some discussions about fake download electrum, so you have to be more careful to act. I'm sorry for you, but this is not the end because we can get some bitcoin to cure it. More alert to all kinds of suspicious things. I personally consider this a very serious problem, because this is not an ordinary phishing action, I have already tried downloading it. It can't be helped, there is almost nothing suspicious, but we can know that it is fake when we want to download it, and also Electrum has several times reminded its users.

3.5 BTC ... It's really not nice. A bitter lesson for life. We always try to improve our security to the maximum, and in this endeavor of ours we often forget and fall into similar traps. When it comes to safety, it is worth working out certain paths that you will walk on from day to day without changing them. For example, downloading updates only from an official source whose link you will check every time you try to update, because the source itself can also be compromised. Sympathize with you.

Those 2 people bumped up this old thread.  :-\

For the sake of on topic reply then heres a screenshot showing off some notification or alert on electrum wallet in pc
which you should always make some verification on electrum.org on whats the latest update so you wont
really get phished.
https://i.imgur.com/J4m4al6.png