90 BTC stolen!

[philipzhai]

I need your help!

I have 2 bitcoin-qt wallets, and yestarday one single transaction happened to both of my wallets and my 90 some BTCs were transferred out of my wallets. I don't know what happened and if it's possible to recover. The blockchain information is as follows:

https://blockchain.info/tx/32d070a547e9d2cc2de4dc453cea27789bf33f1c983ffdc7f28ce3419e70c9d5

On my wallet client software, in the transaction record column, the "address" shows a n/a, and the summary shows a double direction arrow.

How can two wallets be made to transact at the same time with a single transaction? The two addresses are as follows:

1CLn42dHFuXAd7o9bgrsCRmfDvLavRoxTq
1H4esgi6KwhDtVXZXJ12AS7QEwdeQighn4


Is it possible to track down the thief and recover my lost?

Truly,
Philip
hsszzm@mail.sysu.edu.cn

[Sutters Mill]

Man that sucks. Sorry to hear that, but like said above, I don't think there's anything you can do here. What security measures did you take?

[b!z]

Use a cold wallet next time.

[anti-scam]

You should run an antivirus program on your computer and see if you have any keyloggers or malware on your computer. You may not be able to get your coins back but the community can benefit from the knowledge.

[Rannasha]

The coins are gone. Unless whoever took them sends them back, there's no way to recover them. You should also consider your computer compromised and not input any sensitive information on it anymore until this problem has been fixed.

As for the combining of 2 wallets into a single transaction, this is easy: A wallet is just a set of private keys, which can be exported and then imported to another wallet. It's easy to merge any number of wallets into a single one.

[Lethn]

If you kept them on an online wallet then it's your fault for keeping that much money in one place, if I had that much money I would have bought a laptop and stuck it on an offline wallet there and made sure the thing couldn't stay connected to the internet. It sucks that you lost it for sure, don't get me wrong, but I'm getting sick of warning people about online wallets and them never doing anything about it and then coming on here when they finally get it stolen.

[thdvmgbgjn]

I feel like all these stories require further investigation. As much as we all like to talk about backdoors and keyloggers, I have yet to hear ANYONE losing their accounts to keyloggers.

[BTCinNYC]

If you kept them on an online wallet then it's your fault for keeping that much money in one place, if I had that much money I would have bought a laptop and stuck it on an offline wallet there and made sure the thing couldn't stay connected to the internet. It sucks that you lost it for sure, don't get me wrong, but I'm getting sick of warning people about online wallets and them never doing anything about it and then coming on here when they finally get it stolen.

   Not everybody spends all their time on bitcointalk and sees the same amount of warnings that you do.  Maybe instead of being a prick you could use your obviously advanced mind to advance bitcoin . . . maybe by suggesting how the problem can be solved, since the many warnings on random forums is not working for the public.  Maybe a better approach is to convince the popular wallet services to recommend offline storage for large amounts of BTC.  

[nobbynobbynoob]

I thought a double-direction arrow and "n/a" in the transaction field in Bitcoin-Qt represented a transaction between addresses within the same wallet?

[coinrevo]

making cold storage easy should be a goal => building a custom linux distro + raspberry PI + printer.

Is it possible to track down the thief and recover my lost?

sorry for your loss, but playing law enforcement is not a good idea.

[franky1]

I feel like all these stories require further investigation. As much as we all like to talk about backdoors and keyloggers, I have yet to hear ANYONE losing their accounts to keyloggers.

there has actually been some scamming alt coins which has a trojan in their wallet program to steal your btc wallet.dat..

thats why any altcoins i get go to coinex.pw and get converted to btc, and then only store btc long term away from exchanges

[BTCinNYC]

making cold storage easy should be a goal => building a custom linux distro + raspberry PI + printer.

Is it possible to track down the thief and recover my lost?

sorry for your loss, but playing law enforcement is not a good idea.

Exactly!  Even if people do see warnings online to use an offline wallet (which many do not), that sure as hell doesn't mean they know how to do it correctly.  And I'm sure the rebuttal will be: "well if they can't do that they shouldn't be using bitcoin."  Which is a great response - if you want to repress the expansion of bitcoin.  

[Lethn]

If you kept them on an online wallet then it's your fault for keeping that much money in one place, if I had that much money I would have bought a laptop and stuck it on an offline wallet there and made sure the thing couldn't stay connected to the internet. It sucks that you lost it for sure, don't get me wrong, but I'm getting sick of warning people about online wallets and them never doing anything about it and then coming on here when they finally get it stolen.

   Not everybody spends all their time on bitcointalk and sees the same amount of warnings that you do.  Maybe instead of being a prick you could use your obviously advanced mind to advance bitcoin . . . maybe by suggesting how the problem can be solved, since the many warnings on random forums is not working for the public.  Maybe a better approach is to convince the popular wallet services to recommend offline storage for large amounts of BTC.  

I just did and have done several times in the past, you can also find tutorials lying around on how to store your wallet offline, also even doing a simple backup isn't difficult, you just get the wallet up and then go file > backup wallet and then stick the .DAT file in a drive somewhere you hardly use.

What more do you expect us to do exactly? We can't protect people from their own stupidity.

[nobbynobbynoob]

Is it possible to track down the thief and recover my lost?

sorry for your loss, but playing law enforcement is not a good idea.

Well, you could contact your dispute-resolution organisation or rights-enforcement agency... oh wait, we don't live in that kind of society (yet?).

[philipzhai]

Now I just want to know how the wallet summary can show a double-direction arrow and a n/a address?
Doesn't that obviously indicate that the transaction is invalid and so it should be reversed by the system?

[BTCisthefuture]

Ouch sorry to hear about your loss.

The sad reality is the coins are gone. If your local police department is tech savy enough I suppose you could contact them and file a report and maybe if these people ever use an exchange with their real name to cash out they could be caught. It's unlikely police are willing or equipped to do such things at this time in the bitcoin economy/world.

As other have suggested, learn from the mistake and in the future try to keep your coins offline.  Also your computer could very well be compromised right now so you shouldn't use it for anything right now that you consider personal or sensitive until you know for certain that your computer is free of malware/viruses.

[prezbo]

If you kept them on an online wallet then it's your fault for keeping that much money in one place, if I had that much money I would have bought a laptop and stuck it on an offline wallet there and made sure the thing couldn't stay connected to the internet. It sucks that you lost it for sure, don't get me wrong, but I'm getting sick of warning people about online wallets and them never doing anything about it and then coming on here when they finally get it stolen.

   Not everybody spends all their time on bitcointalk and sees the same amount of warnings that you do.  Maybe instead of being a prick you could use your obviously advanced mind to advance bitcoin . . . maybe by suggesting how the problem can be solved, since the many warnings on random forums is not working for the public.  Maybe a better approach is to convince the popular wallet services to recommend offline storage for large amounts of BTC.  

I just did and have done several times in the past, you can also find tutorials lying around on how to store your wallet offline, also even doing a simple backup isn't difficult, you just get the wallet up and then go file > backup wallet and then stick the .DAT file in a drive somewhere you hardly use.

Armory makes all this so easy is laughable. It even gives you instructions the first time you run it.

What more do you expect us to do exactly? We can't protect people from their own stupidity.

Exactly. Don't forget bitcoin is still in beta, which obviously means it's not quite ready for the average user, and we can't stand watch over everyone.

[bitbitz]

I feel like all these stories require further investigation. As much as we all like to talk about backdoors and keyloggers, I have yet to hear ANYONE losing their accounts to keyloggers.

I was thinking this aswell, weird.

[philipzhai]

Now I just want to know how the wallet summary can show a double-direction arrow and a n/a address?
Doesn't that obviously indicate that the transaction is invalid and so it should be reversed by the system?

[prezbo]

Now I just want to know how the wallet summary can show a double-direction arrow and a n/a address?
Doesn't that obviously indicate that the transaction is invalid and so it should be reversed by the system?

What do you mean by a "double-direction arrow"? Bitcoin transactions can't be reversed.