Electrum suffers from a phishing attack that stole 243 BTC

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By Matheus Henrique
Posted on December 27, 2018

The official Twitter account of Electrum Wallet has confirmed that since December 21, users of the wallet are subject to phishing attacks. According to reports, around 243 BTCs have been stolen from portfolios around the world.

The attack of a hacker or a group of cyber criminals hit the famous Electrum wallet in an attempt to steal Bitcoins from its users. The attack was executed via messages on the computer from users who requested that an update be made via GitHub. The update was obviously wrong and loaded with various malware.

According to information provided by Reddit, after attempting to download the update and to use the wallet, users have received several error messages. The user of Reddit u / MYELECTRUMGOTHACKED stated that after having restored his wallet on another PC, he had discovered that all his bitcoins had been transferred to this address: and this address sent near 244 BTC at this other https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1MkM9Q6xo5AHZkLv2sTGLYb3zVreE6wBkj.[19659008 It is still not known how the group of hackers could display the malicious download message on application. The first response from the development team was to "silently update" the wallet so that messages do not have clickable links making it difficult to download malware. The team also wrote on GitHub that at least 33 malicious servers added to the Electrum network had been identified. Other sources say that the number of servers can be between 40 and 50.

The attack stopped on the 27th after the GitHub administrators overthrew the hacker repositories. However, the administrators of Electrum believe that a new attack is about to occur, either with GitHub servers or with a link to another site.

Despite the great success of the attack, these types of scams are easily avoided. First of all, it is important to note that the download link of the update was not official of Electrum. In addition, the update required that the user enters the two-factor authentication (2FA) information, which should only be used at the time of transfer.

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