Outdated Electrum Wallet: My Experience.

[Mate2237]

I have not experienced what I experienced today in Electrum Wallet. When I woke up in this morning June 3rd, 2023, I decided to check my wallet, when I login I saw 0.05+BTC instead of  0.066+BTC and transactions were going on which I saw it with my naked eyes. Immediately fear grabbed me, so I called a friend immediately to come over. And before my friend came, I clicked on the transactions which was written "Local" meaning the transaction is still within the locality and it has not been broadcasted so I should broadcast it. When I saw the two options to handle the issue, which was bump fee and Remove.

I immediately I clicked remove in all the transactions and the wallet balance increase to 0.060+. My mind was not yet okay. So has my friend came we were all wondering who was trying to hack the wallet.
We think all ways, and my friend suggested to update the wallet and see what would happen. So I went to google play store and typed Electrum and it pop up with, "cancel and update" and I clicked update and as the update finished, I checked back the wallet and the total amount of bitcoin came back to 0.066+BTC. Then my mind calm down.

So I am also advising users of Electrum Wallet to update their wallets time to time to avoid cyber attack.

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[hosseinimr93]

I doubt your wallet had been hacked. If your wallet was hacked, the hacker would steal all the fund and broadcast the transaction.
Why should the hacker make a transaction sending only 0.016 BTC while you have 0.066 BTC? Why didn't the hacker broadcast that transaction himself?

So I am also advising users of Electrum Wallet to update their wallets time to time to avoid cyber attack.

If your device has been compromised, you should format your hard drive and reinstall your operating system. You can't make your wallet secure, just with installing a new version of electrum.

[Ultegra134]

I'm sorry, but it seems that your wallet wasn't simply updated with the latest transactions. Did you log in a long time ago? If yes, that's probably your issue. If you hadn't logged in after those missing transactions were conducted, there's a decent chance that the wallet wasn't simply showing them yet. It's only a visual issue; your money never left your wallet; it just wasn't in sync. Perhaps your wallet wasn't connected to the right server or node either. That's what I at least understood from what you wrote.

Personally, I never had any issues with the Electrum wallet; I hadn't logged in since March and logged in just for the sake of this post, of course, and more than 20 transactions were missing because it wasn't synchronized. After a few minutes of synchronization, everything returned to normal.

[Eternad]

I immediately I clicked remove in all the transactions and the wallet balance increase to 0.060+. My mind was not yet okay. So has my friend came we were all wondering who was trying to hack the wallet.
We think all ways, and my friend suggested to update the wallet and see what would happen. So I went to google play store and typed Electrum and it pop up with, "cancel and update" and I clicked update and as the update finished, I checked back the wallet and the total amount of bitcoin came back to 0.066+BTC. Then my mind calm down.

So I am also advising users of Electrum Wallet to update their wallets time to time to avoid cyber attack.

I have an outdated electrum wallet and never experienced this kind of issue. There’s no way that a hacker will do this because how dumb he is for not transferring all your balance and didn’t use the highest fee to make this transaction quickly.

I’m confused on how the transaction has a feature of bump fee and remove since you can’t remove it once there’s a bump fee option because it was already unconfirmed on blockchain. I assume you just make an old transaction which you forgot to enter your password when you are gonna pay.

[hosseinimr93]

I’m confused on how the transaction has a feature of bump fee and remove since you can’t remove it once there’s a bump fee option because it was already unconfirmed on blockchain.

According to OP, the transaction was local.
Most probably, it was an unconfirmed transaction which was dropped from the mempool after a while. This means that the transaction wasn't in the mempool of nodes and it was shown only in OP's wallet.

By the way, note that there is no such thing as "unconfirmed on blockchain". Unconfirmed transactions are not in the blockchain at all. They are in the mempool.

[un_rank]

Updating your electrum wallet is not a sensitive issue that needs to be done all the time, you canwork with older versions of electrum in your air-gapped device comfortably without the need to switch to the latest version. Updating your wallet probably brought it back to sync with the latest block and as such displayed the accurate amount of bitcoins in it.

You can take some more precaution just to be sure like sweeping the funds to a different wallet which may be offline, try clearing your hard disk to check for any bugs or malwares.

- Jay -

[Yamane_Keto]

We need more details on this story, but definitely your problem was in the wallet settings. When you updated it, the old settings were deleted and the default settings were reset, not to mention that the Android wallet Electrum does not have all the features of the desktop version.

So I am also advising users of Electrum Wallet to update their wallets time to time to avoid cyber attack.

This advice could be true if there was a vulnerability that required a quick update, which did not happen in your case.
If your wallet has been hacked, updating it will not enhance your security.

[Eternad]

I’m confused on how the transaction has a feature of bump fee and remove since you can’t remove it once there’s a bump fee option because it was already unconfirmed on blockchain.

By the way, note that there is no such thing as "unconfirmed on blockchain". Unconfirmed transactions are not in the blockchain at all. They are in the mempool.

Thanks for this correction. What I'm trying to say here is the unconfirmed status on a blockchain explorer. Nice to have additional knowledge that mempool is still not part of the blockchain. I'm always confused about the role of the mempool with blockchain and always assume that they are both functioning as one which is the storage of all the transactions unconfirmed and confirmed. Thanks

[nc50lc]

I immediately I clicked remove in all the transactions and the wallet balance increase to 0.060+. My mind was not yet okay.

The real issue here is if you left an unconfirmed transaction with low fee to pay someone, assumed that it's "sent" then closed Electrum;
That may be that transaction which got dropped from mempools, basically, the recipient didn't receive his bitcoins.
So check if you made a recent deal with anyone.

It could also be caused by sending but instead of finalizing it, you clicked "Save" instead.

[Aikidoka]

I don't think that your device is compromised; otherwise, you would find your wallet empty when checking it. A hacker wouldn't just send themselves 0.016 bitcoin when they could have taken the entire 0.06. It's more likely that this is an old transaction that you were about to make but didn't complete so it's simply saved and showing up now that you've opened your Electrum wallet again.

However, if you still have the feeling that you device isn't secure enough, it would be a good idea to do a full reset of the OS and reinstall Electrum. This will help ensure better security. For an ideal idea, you could consider using an air-gapped device and operate your bitcoin from there:)

[khaled0111]

As hosseinimr has suggested, this is most likely an old unconfirmed transaction that has been dropped from he mempool: it doesn't exist any more on the mempool and only your wallet knows about its existence, hence the name "local".
No need to update your app, just remove the local transaction and you'll see your actual balance.
I hope Electrum devs will change this term "local" with something like "canceled" to avoid such confusions.

[nc50lc]

I hope Electrum devs will change this term "local" with something like "canceled" to avoid such confusions.

It still accounts to the wallet's total balance, it's not good to tell the user that it's cancelled.
And that would be more confusing since local transactions aren't all dropped transactions.
Some are simply not broadcasted which wouldn't fit to the "cancelled" category.

Lastly, Electrum has a tooltip that explains to the users that the transaction isn't broadcasted yet, both in Android and PC.

[LoyceV]

Most probably, it was an unconfirmed transaction which was dropped from the mempool after a while. This means that the transaction wasn't in the mempool of nodes and it was shown only in OP's wallet.

Something seems to have changed to (some of) the Electrum servers: I haven't updated Electrum in a while (the wallet is watch-only), and I now have 3 "Local" received transactions that were confirmed in my wallet last time I checked (at most a few days ago). Those transactions are up to 3 weeks old, older transactions aren't affected.

Update: 2 hours later everything is back to normal.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

According to OP, the transaction was local.
Most probably, it was an unconfirmed transaction which was dropped from the mempool after a while.

Yep, that's happened to me a number of times before (though I didn't go through the panic that OP did, because I knew what the transactions were).  Hopefully this is just a case of him not remembering some transaction he did a long time ago.

Speaking of using old Electrum releases, anyone know why the Satochip HW wallet requires users to run an outdated version?  I'm talking about the Satochip that you have to plug into the proprietary card reader, not the new thing they have available that doesn't require it.  It seems odd to me that you have to use version 4.1.5 and can't upgrade.  That might be a tad bit off-topic, but not by much.  I assume it's fairly safe to keep using it, since I haven't heard of any Electrum wallet getting hacked because of being out of date, but who knows.

[Zoomic]

So I went to google play store and typed Electrum and it pop up with, "cancel and update" and I clicked update and as the update finished, I checked back the wallet and the total amount of bitcoin came back to 0.066+BTC. Then my mind calm down.

My reason not to update my wallet everything is fear of redirection. On mobile, I better go to electrum site and try downloading the latest version to override the one I had. I believe it's safer if electrum redirects you to playstore rather than you going to play store to search for electrum wallet.

Yep, that's happened to me a number of times before (though I didn't go through the panic that OP did, because I knew what the transactions were).  Hopefully this is just a case of him not remembering some transaction he did a long time ago.

It happens to be also and I don't go through panic. You only panic like Op when you have the feelings that your wallet might have been compromised.

[Mate2237]

Yep, that's happened to me a number of times before (though I didn't go through the panic that OP did, because I knew what the transactions were).  Hopefully this is just a case of him not remembering some transaction he did a long time ago.

Well I didn't know. When I saw the transactions and the amount of bitcoins that I saw at the moment made me panic because I have not experienced it before but now that I have experienced it, I will not panic like before again.

@ The Sceptical Chymist  🙏 I will use this medium to ask for second chance of the review. I tried to pm you but the message didn't go.

[dzungmobile]

So I went to google play store and typed Electrum and it pop up with, "cancel and update" and I clicked update and as the update finished

Don't do this in future, it's risky.

If you want to update your Electrum wallet, other wallets or any software, you must get links from their official websites.
The risk when you search in Google Play is fake applications. If you search and fall into fake Electrum wallet, you will not see 0.05 BTC or 0.06 BTC but all your bitcoin will be stolen.

Update Electrum wallet, go there: https://electrum.org/#download and get a link to that wallet software on Google Play https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.electrum.electrum

If you don't have many used addresses in that wallet, like have only one address that stores your bitcoin, you can simply and quickly check the balance with Bitcoin block explorers. Don't panic!

[icynote_original]

I'm pretty sure that your computer has been infiltrated by malware. make sure you re-scan your entire computer system with a paid antivirus.
because if it was electrum and it hadn't been infiltrated by malware, it would never have happened that way.

[Pmalek]

I'm always confused about the role of the mempool with blockchain and always assume that they are both functioning as one which is the storage of all the transactions unconfirmed and confirmed.

There is no "the" mempool as in one universal mempool showing all unconfirmed transactions. Each node has its own mempool of unconfirmed transactions. They communicate with each other and share transaction data amongst themselves. On the other hand, we have one Bitcoin blockchain (the chain). One universal record of all confirmed transactions from the beginning of Bitcoin. Don't be confused by thinking that because the chain is decentralized and recorded all over the place, that those are different chains. They are copies of one chain.

I'm pretty sure that your computer has been infiltrated by malware.

No it hasn't. I am pretty sure you should read the thread, give it a go. OP was using an Android device, not a computer. Possible reasons why there was an unconfirmed transaction in the wallet were mentioned in the thread.