Protocol Podcast host Eric Savics tweeted last week that he lost his Bitcoin savings in a hardware phishing scam and asked if anyone has ever successfully retrieved stolen Bitcoin. He tweeted that he lost 12 bitcoins in a phishing scam. The crypto community offered support to Eric and donated to him and as well offered forensic help. 12 bitcoins at the time of writing are worth over $100,000.
A fake KeepKey Chrome Extension asked for the seed phrase of Eric’s wallet.
A “seed phrase” refers to a combination of words that can act as the private key of a bitcoin wallet and do the transactions. According to Eric, the phishing attack happened due to a fake KeepKey Chrome Extension that asked for the seed phrase of his hardware wallet. He tweeted, “All my savings are gone. I have zero Bitcoin.” Currently, the stolen funds are in another address and have not yet been moved. Bitcoin transactions are irreversible in nature. Once Bitcoins are transferred to another wallet, there is no mechanism to reverse it.
The crypto community comes in support of Eric Savics.
The crypto community came in support of Savics in any way they can. Even prominent crypto personalities chimed in. The CEO of Binance, Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao, said that he will ask the team in Binance to blacklist the address of the stolen Bitcoins. Many in the community donated some Bitcoins to Eric out of the goodness of their heart. Savics was initially reluctant but proceeded to share his Bitcoin address with people. At the moment, his bitcoin address has 0.77 Bitcoin worth $7,167. He vowed to return the money if he retrieved his BTC stash. Eric also shared that a forensics firm has already reached out to help in the retrieval.
Sorry to hear about your loss. Will ask the team to put that receiving address in the blacklist.
If you can provide details on how the phishing worked, it will help others too.
— CZ Binance 🔶🔶🔶 (@cz_binance) June 13, 2020
This phishing attack gave crypto critics one more chance to target the crypto industry. Nouriel Roubini tweeted and criticized the crypto financial system for not being secure enough and people losing their funds each day. Roubini said that there is 100% security in the legacy financial system.
