90 BTC stolen!

[Zeal0t]

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?

I am pretty sure the fact that the system has not reversed the action means it will not do so. Sorry about your loss man, don't do anything irrational.

[phillipsjk]

for anyone else concerned about losing their money I highly recommend the following free way to secure your wallet.

1) Install True Crypt on your PC/laptop and create an encrypted volume that is only mounted manually.
2) Install Virtual Box.
3) Create A Linux virtual machine inside the encrypted volume ...
4) Install Armoury, Bitcoin Client, Litecoin etc into the linux virtual machine ...
5) Create your encrypted/password protected armory, litecoin and other wallets inside the virtual machine.
6) do not use the virtual machine for anything other than Sending and receiving crypto transactions, do not install anything other than the bare essential tools you need and do not surf the internet with it.

from inside the virtual machine you should also be able to create a paper wallet for cold storage.

This only works if you never use the host (hypervisor) for anything but launching virtual machines.
If the host is compromised: so is the virtual machine. Keeping it encrypted is about the same security as keeping your wallet encrypted. If you never spend funds, an attacker can't either (assuming the passphrase is secure).

How can two wallets be made to transact at the same time with a single transaction?

If all else fails, this can be done manually. Coinjoin transactions take advantage of this.

[loganha112]

Hey everyone I just came across this thread because I had all my BTC stolen from me as well, not from my wallet, but from BTC-E. I contacted BCT-E and they basically did the same thing, just give me all the login and logout times and IP address. I came across this:

79   logout   logout use logout button   75.***(My Logout after a while of trying to figure out where my money went)   
25.01.14
23:22
78   logout   logout use logout button   62.***( Someone else's ip logout)   
25.01.14
21:45
77   login   success login   62.***(Someone else's ip that used for another login)   
25.01.14
21:43
76   login   success login   75.***(My IP)   
25.01.14
20:51

I find this very odd only because in between those other IP login's, I had an email sent to me with a withdrawal confirmation at 21:44, that i tried to cancel but there was an error. Is there a way to contact BTC-E again to explain this to them? I have all the proof, withdrawal confirmation email at 21:44, and these different IP addresses that show there was a login twice in a row and then my money was gone.

[cp1]

Sorry but they're gone, that's the nature of bitcoin, it's irreversible.  Next time only store a small portion in your hot wallet, make an offline wallet on a usb stickor maybe a raspberry pi.

[EFFV]

Hey everyone I just came across this thread because I had all my BTC stolen from me as well, not from my wallet, but from BTC-E. I contacted BCT-E and they basically did the same thing, just give me all the login and logout times and IP address. I came across this:

79   logout   logout use logout button   75.***(My Logout after a while of trying to figure out where my money went)   
25.01.14
23:22
78   logout   logout use logout button   62.***( Someone else's ip logout)   
25.01.14
21:45
77   login   success login   62.***(Someone else's ip that used for another login)   
25.01.14
21:43
76   login   success login   75.***(My IP)   
25.01.14
20:51

I find this very odd only because in between those other IP login's, I had an email sent to me with a withdrawal confirmation at 21:44, that i tried to cancel but there was an error. Is there a way to contact BTC-E again to explain this to them? I have all the proof, withdrawal confirmation email at 21:44, and these different IP addresses that show there was a login twice in a row and then my money was gone.

I had approximately 180 ltc and 1.7 btc stolen from btc-e directly after I contacted support for another issue.

I can not trust btc-e again.

[cp1]

Never trust an online wallet

[cczerouno]

If tools like BitIodine were public, maybe these cases would have more chances, and thefts would reduce frequency.
http://miki.it/pdf/BitIodine_presentation.pdf
http://miki.it/pdf/thesis.pdf

[User705]

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.  

So you somehow purchased 90 XBT but didn't ever see any warnings regarding properly securing them?  Really?   

[securepaperwallet]

Damn... That's a lot of stolen Bitcoins... But it seems that your PrivKeys have been stolen and imported to a client for the transfer...

My recommendation is not to store 90 BTC in an hot wallet - if you are not an active BCE trader. Better store them on secure paperwallets.

[Bitcoi2n2n]

That's a mad amount, I'm sorry man.

Never trust an online wallet

Just for your info, he used an offline wallet...

[Alphi]

This only works if you never use the host (hypervisor) for anything but launching virtual machines.
If the host is compromised: so is the virtual machine. Keeping it encrypted is about the same security as keeping your wallet encrypted. If you never spend funds, an attacker can't either (assuming the passphrase is secure).

that's where you are wrong buddy... if the encrypted volume is unmounted even with ALL your passwords an attacker would have to somehow scrape the entire volume off your PC.... and given that its 80GB or more in size this could take DAYS or even weeks (with most peoples lousy internet) and if your PC was compromised you could turn it off  and open the encrypted volume from a clean PC on different network and move the money before they got to it.

also being inside a virtual machine makes it exponentially more difficult for any malicious trojan to get at your wallet files which would also be encrypted (even if the host is compromised). so for the very brief period that you actually have the encrypted volume OPEN on your PC any attacker would have to scrape your entire VM then OPEN it with your passwords then take the wallets out and OPEN them again with another set of passwords and then spend the money before you noticed.

this is so much more complicated than simply copying your .dat files and logging your keystrokes.

yes any PC that is connected to the internet can still be compromised but if you make the difficulty too hard.. most thieves give up and move on to the next target.

[alani123]

Because making a note is realy going t help.
https://blockchain.info/address/1MVeQqkm5Kr91aAkvsQmB9i2g2VQjr9a1j

[erik777]

It looks like after going on a spending spree, he's currently down to $23k USD. 

https://blockchain.info/address/1JzAB4QkvvWi6iuLgYKe2wZfb5UA7eLmkB

[alani123]

It looks like after going on a spending spree, he's currently down to $23k USD. 

https://blockchain.info/address/1JzAB4QkvvWi6iuLgYKe2wZfb5UA7eLmkB

Or he's just mixing the btc...

[cp1]

Just for your info, he used an offline wallet...

I was talking about the guy who lost money from btc-e.  But the OP also used an online wallet.  An offline one would be installed onto something with no internet access, so your keys can't get stolen.

[Slight0]

for anyone else concerned about losing their money I highly recommend the following free way to secure your wallet.

1) Install True Crypt on your PC/laptop and create an encrypted volume that is only mounted manually.
2) Install Virtual Box.
3) Create A Linux virtual machine inside the encrypted volume using a clean install of a popular distro (xubuntu etc)   (I tried ubuntu but its a bitch to get working with Virtual box)
4) Install Armoury, Bitcoin Client, Litecoin etc into the linux virtual machine (whatever trusted wallets you want)
5) Create your encrypted/password protected armory, litecoin and other wallets inside the virtual machine.
6) do not use the virtual machine for anything other than Sending and receiving crypto transactions, do not install anything other than the bare essential tools you need and do not surf the internet with it.

from inside the virtual machine you should also be able to create a paper wallet for cold storage.

NOTE: you will need about 80gb of space if you want to store the entire bitcoin and litecoin blockchains inside a virtual machine.
when you are not using the virtual machine you can pause it (remembering to always Pause when the screen is locked) and dismount the encrypted volume.

if you want to back up all your money all you need to do is copy the encrypted volume to another PC or external HD and  locate the backup far away from your PC (failsafe incase of fire/robbery etc)

this is the most secure way that I have found to protect your Coins while keeping them fairly accessible and safely backed up.

all the tools above are FREE. it only takes your time to learn how to use them properly.

and if you think its too much effort.. I would suggest that its probably not too much effort to secure a few thousand dollars worth of BTC which could be worth 10X that in the coming years.

Screw off mate. Do you really think anyone has time for that shit? There are so many easier ways to do it this just annoys the hell out of me.

[cp1]

Screw off mate. Do you really think anyone has time for that shit? There are so many easier ways to do it this just annoys the hell out of me.

There should be a button to force people back to the newbie area.

[Abdussamad]

And the wallet was not emptied, with more than 100 BTC left not taken, Weird!

There's a possible explanation for that. They stole from an old copy of your wallet. Since then you've sent coins to other people (normal spend transactions) and the change has gone to new addresses (and corresponding private keys) that are not present in the old copy of the wallet that the thief has. So consider where you backed up your wallet in the past.

I had an email sent to me with a withdrawal confirmation at 21:44, that i tried to cancel but there was an error.

How did you try to cancel the withdrawal? Don't tell me you clicked on the link in the email?!! If you did that you CONFIRMED the withdrawal instead of canceling it. To cancel the withdrawal you do nothing and ignore the email.

[EvilPanda]

And the wallet was not emptied, with more than 100 BTC left not taken, Weird!

There's a possible explanation for that. They stole from an old copy of your wallet. Since then you've sent coins to other people (normal spend transactions) and the change has gone to new addresses (and corresponding private keys) that are not present in the old copy of the wallet that the thief has. So consider where you backed up your wallet in the past.

This seems very probable. He hacked into your backup, find it and you'll at least know which machine was compromised.

[Slight0]

Screw off mate. Do you really think anyone has time for that shit? There are so many easier ways to do it this just annoys the hell out of me.

There should be a button to force people back to the newbie area.

Why? Because I don't prefer some overly complicated and totally impractical method of "securing" my bitcoin wallets? Is this how you're going to spread bitcoin acceptance? Offering round about solutions to simple problems with much more secure and practical alternatives? Yes yes, I know how to make encrypted partitions, run virtual machines, etc but you're tricking yourself into a false sense of security and spreading bad information if you think these approaches offer extra protection.

Stop. The only newb here is you and anyone who propagates that tinfoil hat nonsense. God forbid an actual newb reads that post and thinks that's the right way to secure his bitcoins.