Post
Topic
Board Beginners & Help
Re: Newbie DO'S and DONT'S?
by
btchris
on 02/07/2014, 13:06:12 UTC
Probably already been said but be wary of installing wallets for new alt-currencies, I've heard of at least two wallets with keyloggers. Also make sure to download from official websites and not random links posted up on the forum.

Would you mind sharing a little bit details? I have tried to search with Google but got no results.

  • Don't download programs from the Internet. This rule is difficult to follow 100%; just be aware that each new program you download and run could be the one that steals your BTC.

Have there actually been any cases of people downloading software and having their BTC coins hacked? I know there's a lot of 'automatic bitcoin' software out there that are obvious scams, but I'm saying more subtle things like Alt Coin wallets, someone downloads an Alt Coin wallet installation and all of a sudden their BTC coins are gone. Any cases of that yet?

I guess that depends on your definition of "subtle", but one thing is for certain: there's some new piece of malware posted on the forums every couple of weeks, and it's been getting a bit more clever each time. This is a trend that I'd guess is very likely to continue.

Take this one for example. The website it points to looked surprising professional even though it had some broken links (it's currently down, so you'll just have to take my word for it). It wasn't posted by a newbie which gave it a little credibility (I'm pretty sure the forum account it was posted under was hacked). The malware itself wasn't all that clever given that it tripped a bunch of antivirus (probably some existing RATware if I had to guess), but overall it wasn't immediately obvious.

Here's another one that's a little more clever. Not the nicest looking website, and it is posted by a newbie, but it claims to be open source and even has a link the the supposed source on GitHub. There's also someone who's not a newbie who is somewhat defending it. The malware itself isn't an off-the-shelf package-- it appears to have been custom written and doesn't trip antivirus unlike the first example.

I'd have to guess that these kinds of examples are already fooling at least some people, otherwise why would their respective authors keep bothering (both of those examples were not the first of their kind...)?