Just saw a post that shows how risky it is if you don’t know how to keep your stuff safe or if your security game is weak. With this news, there's a chance some shady character might snag that compromised Bitcoin account.
But honestly, let’s hope this is just a hoax because no one wants to be that unfortunate soul who checks their wallet one day and finds their Bitcoin gone.
So, everyone, take a minute to check your wallets and ask yourself if you’ve made any mistakes, like putting your seed, mnemonic phrase, or private key out there in plain sight.
If this is real, it's one of the mistakes is about keeping the private keys or seeds in the email through its inbox or probably drafts saved. That's how these hackers are extracting the email addresses that they've hacked if found that there were some information like that kept on that email. It's never safe to keep these seeds or any login details through email or any cloud storages.
Yes, putting it in plain-text is just another No-no. But it's interesting that the hacker says that he is selling it because he doesn't want to take the risk of such large sum. Meaning he is afraid that if he moves it, every blockchain analytics will be hot on that account and he can't even cash it out.
So I don't know if there will be buyers of this Bitcoin exploit, as it is going to be very dangerous unless they really know how to hide everything and move the Bitcoin to every crypto possible that is hard to track by cyber investigators.
Many of us likely have done that in the past when we're still newbies until we landed here and learned that it's very unsafe. And this kind of incident has proven that to be dangerous. That reason of hacker why he chose to sell it might be valid or he might just have been also playing around trying to scam someone who's greedy. We don't know about the exact thing but this is the risk of those who are keeping their seeds on email drafts, as well as in online dropboxes or spreadsheets.
True, me myself have done this, haha. But I actually did it in a smart way, not just storing the seed as it is. I left some words as they are while at least halt of them I only gave myself hints (but not the exact word). Like for example "dolphin" I used "Ecco", cause in the 90s there was a video game for Mega Drive called "Ecco the dolphin". So yeah, you can be smart about it and even hackers won't know what they are seeing.
About the case on hand, I wonder why a seller would give away the wallet for a % of the value. Sure, he doesn't want to be found out by tracing the transactions, but a potential buyer would have the same issue.
The dark web is full of scams. This offer just seems too good to be true. There arent any shortcuts that let you make 9 BTC without much effort and there are too many red flags here. According to what I could find, this NormalLeVrai person presents themselves as a prolific hacker. Why would they suddenly be shy about withdrawing the Bitcoin?
Needless to say, people should be careful with the security of their accounts even if they have much less than 9 BTC to trade with. This might be an elaborate scam, but people get compromised often enough to make it believable.
Who sent such sensitive information in a plaintext? and how is that possible in the first place? People don't casually send password in plaintext let alone password to crypto account or in this case private key? There are so much question and I have a hard time believing this.
Even if it's true hackers have no problem moving that amount of money, some hackers casually moving hundred millions and suddenly the hacker worried about associated risk, etc. Does he think anyone who buy the address is getting money from a legitimate source? I think this hacker is fishing for people to buy his scam wallet.
Agreed with this, whole thing seems fake as hell.
Keeping the seed, mnemonic phrase or private key is our responsibility and making safe from hackers. That is our assets so we must pay attention to prevent the bad things comes. We can't saves our credentials on online, that is a big no. So we must search for other ways saving and just we knowing the place. We can't just trust others saving our credentials without knowing if we can trust that person or not.
Not necessarily just storing seed phrases and privite keys in emails. It is generally bad practice to store the keys to your wallet anywhere online or on a device for that matter even if the device never goes online. A phone or a computer may be stolen. If such devices have a sensitive data such as a private key stored in it, the thief would be doubly rewarded with not just the device but the fund in the wallet. This is why you must never keep your private key in a device but in a paper carefully stored offline.
Nevertheless, nothing is foolproof. A paper may burn in an accident, so it is an insurance of sorts if you store in more than one place. Make sure they're safe unobvious places.
One might think that younger generations, being more digitally native, would be immune to these mistakes, but I dont think so; I believe that those of us who are used to jotting things down on paper are less likely to make them.
That's right; it wouldn't be surprising if it were a scam.
Yes, for all we know that hacker is trying to pull a scam here.
Although he try prove itself in the same post. But still, with that huge amount, for sure he will be selling not less that 9.2 BTC. So who will buy that when he won't get back his capital to begin with? Hold it for the next couple of years, but that's not good as the scammers have the copy of the seed phrase.
Sounds too good to be true. But who knows, maybe it all is true Then I don't know why the hell one would put his seeds in plain text.. or any info for that mattter. That company got it coming in such a case.
It might indeed be a scam, as I can't believe that whoever went to the trouble of accessing that account would simply sell it instead of trying to steal those coins and then sell them after mixing them or adding them as liquidity to any decentralized platform.
But in general, you should avoid keeping your coins on centralized platforms or in digital form (like taking a picture of the seeds).
The offer is too good to be true. If it is true, then the victim will learn the hard way. Losing such am amount because of carelessness is just terrible. This is what happens when someone chooses convenience without considering the implications. Storing sensitive information offline seems to be a hard task for some people. The Internet is not entirely safe, so it is essential to exercise caution at all times.
I also think it sounds way to good to be true and definitely grounds for SCAM alert [if you are in the market
for stealing BTC9.22998 which lets face it not many of us are.]
I am just wondering why are they selling it and at what cost? why dont the hackers / criminals just access
the wallet and take those BTC9.22998 themselves?
That's sort of encrypting in a manual way. I haven't thought of that since I was a noob before, I just pasted it there before but fortunately nothing bad happened until I've learned the better way.
Yes, that's a general reminder about not keeping on any online storages with our private keys. There have been a lot of cases in the past that their emails were hacked and these hackers know better than their victims and have anticipated that there might be some stored phrases on their drafts.
I agree, everyone is prone but we can reduce the chances of being a victim of these by raising awareness and having an idea of these tactics.
This feels like scammer selling wallet.dat file with lots of Bitcoin at cheap price, with claim they don't know or forget the password. So i believe this case is just different way to scam people. Whoever actually bought it will be scammed and IMO they totally deserve it.
I am guilty of this, things we do as a newbie lol
I used to store recovery seed in Gmail account until later that I venture into crypto more and then I came face to face with reasons why we shouldn't keep recovery seed this way, because they are wrong.
I see why many newbies come into crypto space and did stupid things that led to them losing their coins, if you aren't going to dig deeper and try to learn more you would probably accept that using your gmail to keep recovery seed isn't bad.
You really shouldn't accept that you have known alot about crypto whilr you are still a newbie, you will do alot of mistakes with proudness.
The security of wallets, which serve as the storage for assets, must be taken seriously, and many well-meaning people are urging others to consider why wallet security must be prioritized and stored in a truly secure location, as this directly affects the safety of the assets within. Even seemingly trivial matters must be considered, such as asking whether the practical stepsfrom the installation process to securing the seed phrase or private keyare truly correct, given that criminals wont notify users before carrying out malicious actions against their wallets. Incidents of wallets being hacked through various methods leave users speechless when they realize their assets have been compromised, so lets ensure we arent the next ones to experience this.
It's just sad that the original owner of the 9.229 BTC has to lose his/her Bitcoin to hackers due to failure of properly securing his assets from the mediums through hackers have access to it. Because if he hasn't store his wallet seed phrase on an online platforms, there is no how this hacker would have been able to see the seed phrases. And this is the more reason why I always prioritize keeping my private keys and seed phrase stored in a physical location that can be both water and fire proof to avoid hackers having access to if eventually my device gets hacked. And likewise prioritizing primary security measures like avoiding to click from unknown strangers also helps a lot too.