An investor lost $24 million worth of bitcoin

[CryptoBry]

Thieves stole roughly 1,500 bitcoins by taking control of his phone number and using Google's "Forgot password?" feature to gain access to his email. With possession of the two personal accounts, the thieves hacked Terpin's crypto wallet, stole the digital assets and quickly sold them,

To be honest and speaking like an ordinary man who is not really very technical, this story quietly illustrates why there are people who are afraid to deal with cryptocurrency because we can not deny that there is a big risk of being a victim of hacking. Hackers are now getting advanced and can always be studying new ways and means to get into people's fat wallets and get themselves rich in the process. I know this is never the fault of Bitcoin but in the face of this big risk a person may think twice of investing with digital assets. And the sadder part is that there is nothing we can do for now once the control is already on the hackers' side, we can only watch how the assets are transferred from one wallet to another and even trace them to different exchanges but to stop the whole thing is beyond anybody's power.

[BlackFor3st]

A Crypto investor Michael Terpin lost roughly 1,5oo bitcoins on January 7, 2018, after falling victim to a SIM swap attack, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The bitcoin stake was worth $24 million that day, roughly three weeks after the asset hit its record high price.
The incredibly precise hack involves thieves taking control of a phone number and using it to access email accounts, bank reserves, and even crypto wallets.
Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.
One crypto investor lost bitcoin worth as much as $24 million after falling victim to a new kind of hack known as SIM swapping, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Michael Terpin was hit by the attack on January 7, 2018, days after bitcoin reached its record high price. Thieves stole roughly 1,500 bitcoins by taking control of his phone number and using Google's "Forgot password?" feature to gain access to his email. With possession of the two personal accounts, the thieves hacked Terpin's crypto wallet, stole the digital assets and quickly sold them, according to WSJ.
Bitcoin traded between $16,969 and $15,790 per coin on January 7, 2018. The digital coin now trades at roughly $8,700.

Source:
Wall Street journal

This is very personal problem, in the first place why he didn't secure his credentials and didn't notice the changes that were made. Even if they were able to gain access to the email, I wonder how they were able to get the keys of his crypto wallet.

In the first place, I didn't think that it is a genuine happening but if in case it is really genuine. One thing that I can say only, he should have put his bitcoins in a safe wallet where the private keys is secure or he should have put it in cold wallet.
 

[bhabygrim]

This sucks, I see stories like this all the time on here. He really shouldn’t have been keeping that amount of crypto online though. It should be on paper wallets or a hardware wallet. Sad for him

Yes this huge amount of investment should be kept in a safe place .
The question is why didn't the investor make sure that his investment is safe?
Hardware wallet is only a cheap investment to secure all of his crypto so why didn't he bought it if he would keep a huge amount of crypto?

[Edraket31]

This sucks, I see stories like this all the time on here. He really shouldn’t have been keeping that amount of crypto online though. It should be on paper wallets or a hardware wallet. Sad for him

Yes this huge amount of investment should be kept in a safe place .
The question is why didn't the investor make sure that his investment is safe?
Hardware wallet is only a cheap investment to secure all of his crypto so why didn't he bought it if he would keep a huge amount of crypto?

That's really sad to hear that there's a lot of investors who are in depth loss and not only a thousand dollar but a million dollar which cannot earn that easily especially for normal person like us, if hat will happen to me I really don't know what will happen to me, maybe I will be in deep depression or will just let it go if I am billionaire. Anyway, we should always let this be a lesson to be learned from all of us.

[sapnu]

Thieves stole roughly 1,500 bitcoins by taking control of his phone number and using Google's "Forgot password?" feature to gain access to his email. With possession of the two personal accounts, the thieves hacked Terpin's crypto wallet, stole the digital assets and quickly sold them,

To be honest and speaking like an ordinary man who is not really very technical, this story quietly illustrates why there are people who are afraid to deal with cryptocurrency because we can not deny that there is a big risk of being a victim of hacking. Hackers are now getting advanced and can always be studying new ways and means to get into people's fat wallets and get themselves rich in the process. I know this is never the fault of Bitcoin but in the face of this big risk a person may think twice of investing with digital assets. And the sadder part is that there is nothing we can do for now once the control is already on the hackers' side, we can only watch how the assets are transferred from one wallet to another and even trace them to different exchanges but to stop the whole thing is beyond anybody's power.

It is a big example that we should be careful of our decision because this world is hard then we ever think. We are making money digitally meaning we cannot handle our own money physically. So every step must be studied because one single mistake, all of your money will be loose. We should study every project we want to invest in because not every word they say is true, it is normal for them to say promising words so you should not trust that, you should find out on your own. You can see the reviews of other investors if that particular project is worth investing in.

[d3nz]

This sucks, I see stories like this all the time on here. He really shouldn’t have been keeping that amount of crypto online though. It should be on paper wallets or a hardware wallet. Sad for him

Yes this huge amount of investment should be kept in a safe place .
The question is why didn't the investor make sure that his investment is safe?
Hardware wallet is only a cheap investment to secure all of his crypto so why didn't he bought it if he would keep a huge amount of crypto?

I don't think that Hardware Wallet is secured since it can be hack by a spyware or worms and it depends if the antivirus is updated or can detect it since some of the new wares or virus are updated now.

And i think that paper wallet is much secured since you can access it  by accessing using the private key. Trezor hardware wallet can be secured if there is an updated antivirus or malware app.

[Youghoor]

A Crypto investor Michael Terpin lost roughly 1,5oo bitcoins on January 7, 2018, after falling victim to a SIM swap attack, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The bitcoin stake was worth $24 million that day, roughly three weeks after the asset hit its record high price.
The incredibly precise hack involves thieves taking control of a phone number and using it to access email accounts, bank reserves, and even crypto wallets.
Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.
One crypto investor lost bitcoin worth as much as $24 million after falling victim to a new kind of hack known as SIM swapping, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Michael Terpin was hit by the attack on January 7, 2018, days after bitcoin reached its record high price. Thieves stole roughly 1,500 bitcoins by taking control of his phone number and using Google's "Forgot password?" feature to gain access to his email. With possession of the two personal accounts, the thieves hacked Terpin's crypto wallet, stole the digital assets and quickly sold them, according to WSJ.
Bitcoin traded between $16,969 and $15,790 per coin on January 7, 2018. The digital coin now trades at roughly $8,700.

Source:
Wall Street journal

This is very sad to lose such amount of bitcoin. But why will this person keep such amount of bitcoin in  a single wallet?  This will help him not to make such mistake again and become more vigilant on how he keeps his wallet safe from such attacks in the future. The internet is not as friendly as many of you think. You need to protect yourself while surfing the internet to avoid being attacked.

[gentlemand]

I don't think that Hardware Wallet is secured since it can be hack by a spyware or worms and it depends if the antivirus is updated or can detect it since some of the new wares or virus are updated now.

Erm, track down whoever told you that and twist their nipples until they pass out.

You can plug your hardware wallet into the most disgustingly virus ridden machine and you'll be absolutely fine. That's the whole point of them. Nothing on the internet can access the private keys.

There are plenty of attempts to trick you into entering its seed into websites but you'd have to be exceptionally dim to fall for it.

[BigBos]

I don't think that Hardware Wallet is secured since it can be hack by a spyware or worms and it depends if the antivirus is updated or can detect it since some of the new wares or virus are updated now.

Erm, track down whoever told you that and twist their nipples until they pass out.

You can plug your hardware wallet into the most disgustingly virus ridden machine and you'll be absolutely fine. That's the whole point of them. Nothing on the internet can access the private keys.

There are plenty of attempts to trick you into entering its seed into websites but you'd have to be exceptionally dim to fall for it.

I don't know how that person will endure the pain of rotating nipples 
however, I'm still quite confused about how hardwallet will be hacked, whereas it has a private key that only you know. if the person put it on the hardwallet, I think the assets they have are still safe until now. but, it has already passed, I am sure that the person learned from this. however, 1500 bitcoin is too valuable to forget 

[kro55]

• Crypto investor Michael Terpin lost roughly 1,5oo bitcoins on January 7, 2018, after falling victim to a SIM swap attack.
• The bitcoin stake was worth $24 million that day, roughly three weeks after the asset hit its record high price.
• The incredibly precise hack involves thieves taking control of a phone number and using it to access email accounts, bank reserves, and even crypto wallets.

Source

This is one of down side of CC that stolen coins can never be recovered.

[darkangel11]

If you have, or rather had, that many coins that either means you've been around forever or you had a shit ton to throw at it.

Both scenarios mean you should know considerably better than to keep that door open for anyone with the will and skill to walk through it. Sim swapping is well known enough.

He probably was the more money less brain kind of guy. He had so much money, money most of us will never have, even if Bitcoin hits 1 million per coin because by that time we'll sell most of it and only have a million or two in BTC left, and lost it all because he didn't know anything about security.
People have just 10k USD and keep it divided between multiple wallets and to have millions and not buy a hardware wallet or at least a decent offline laptop is plain stupid. You can buy super secure machines like purism librem for 1,5k USD or a hardware wallet for as little as $100.

[Twinkledoe]

I don't think that Hardware Wallet is secured since it can be hack by a spyware or worms and it depends if the antivirus is updated or can detect it since some of the new wares or virus are updated now.

Erm, track down whoever told you that and twist their nipples until they pass out.

You can plug your hardware wallet into the most disgustingly virus ridden machine and you'll be absolutely fine. That's the whole point of them. Nothing on the internet can access the private keys.

There are plenty of attempts to trick you into entering its seed into websites but you'd have to be exceptionally dim to fall for it.

Bottomline, still on you how you will be a target of those phishing attacks. You should not be gullible in entering your private keys to just anything that will pop up. He might have entered his keys unknowingly to some site he didn't know was a phishing site. But such amount is really heavy on pocket. I guess, he learned his lessons well by that traumatic experience.

[drumamat]

This sucks, I see stories like this all the time on here. He really shouldn’t have been keeping that amount of crypto online though. It should be on paper wallets or a hardware wallet. Sad for him

I completely agree with you. Keeping such an amount of money and not securing yourself is a big nonsense. But the second side of the coin is to replace SIM cards. How can these substitutions be prevented? Indeed, there have been a lot of victims of fake SIM cards lately.

[samcrypto]

This is why we keep telling everyone not to store money online, especially big amount of bitcoin. This incident teach many people about the online wallet, its been almost 2 years and people can’t get over about this scam. If you are planning to invest big money then put extra effort on learning about cryptocurrency, don’t just depend to your secretary or to anyone, you really have to secure yourself to prevent incidents like this.

[pixie85]

This should be a lesson to all those who hold money on exchanges and in online wallets.
There were so many things ho could do to be safe and all of those things were so easy.

Buy a hardware wallet.
Divide money between wallets.
Keep some on exchanges so at least you'd have different emails and account names for each of them.
Not use gmail.

[crzy]

This should be a lesson to all those who hold money on exchanges and in online wallets.
There were so many things ho could do to be safe and all of those things were so easy.

Buy a hardware wallet.
Divide money between wallets.
Keep some on exchanges so at least you'd have different emails and account names for each of them.
Not use gmail.

Millions of money yet can’t afford to buy a hard wallet is ridiculous, I’m sure that millionaire is not investing alone I mean someone should guy them on how to properly put the money online. He loss big amount of money whether he’s so rich or not, what we have to learn here is that we should not trust the wallet that we can’t control even if its a small money only.

[andulolika]

Any link for source?
Who the hell holds 24m on a hot wallet?
How you sell that amount of bitcoins into a bank and the bank not freeze it? He couldn't not notice it missing on time since it pings you whenever a move is made by mails and app.

[Eugenar]

how sad he was, I who had only been stolen too little, it was as if I wanted to cry out loud. he lost that much, was he stressed or sick ..? it is a very evil crime. I can't afford that ..!

We aren't even sure if he really is a victim of a hacking or his funds has been really stolen, in the first place he would not become a victim if he just been responsible enough in handling his funds. There are different measures and procedures to keep your funds safe before investing in cryptocurrency. If the OP posted a link regarding the real situation, we might figure out if the victim has a deeper reason for how his funds got stolen. So far, the lesson that we might have regarding this is to become personally responsible for our funds, do not store it on exchanges as we aren't the one who really has the ownership of it.

[LogitechMouse]

This sucks, I see stories like this all the time on here. He really shouldn’t have been keeping that amount of crypto online though. It should be on paper wallets or a hardware wallet. Sad for him

It really sucks indeed but there is a mistake coming from the investor himself for not storing his Bitcoin well. With that huge amount of Bitcoin, he should stored it on a hardware wallet but probably it is stored on a web wallet or online wallet which is his mistake but it is a lesson from him too and for the other investors and holders here.

[crossabdd]

so, nothing is safe in our storage. especially on online storage, banks, crypto wallets, etc. I personally have experienced. EDO coins (EIDOO) at that time also had the highest price. around $ 20K, I don't know where the hacker came from. suddenly my assets were sent to another wallet. the only possible mistake is i didn't pay attention to the myether web link. so there is no safe system. hackers are always smarter at trapping us. so stay careful.